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On Norms and Agency 

Conversations about Gender Equality 
with Women and Men in 20 Countries 


Ana Maria Munoz Boudet, 
Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk 
with Angelica Thumala 




Human Development 


THE WORLD BANK 





















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On Norms and Agency 




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DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT 
Human Development 


On Norms and Agency 

Conversations about Gender Equality with 
Women and Men in 20 Countries 


Ana Marfa Munoz Boudet, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk with Angelica Thumala 



THE WORLD BANK 
Washington, D.C. 


©2013 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank 
1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433 
Telephone: 202-473-KX)0; Internet: www.worldbank.org 

Some rights reserved 

1 2 3 4 16 15 14 13 

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Attribution—Please cite the work as follows: Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk 
with Angelica Thumala. 2013. On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender EquaUty ivith 
Women and Men in 20 Countries. Directions in Development. Washington, DC: World Bank. 
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All queries on rights and licenses should be addressed to the Office of the Publisher, The World Bank, 1818 
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ISBN (paper): 978-0-8213-9862-3 
ISBN (electronic): 978-0-8213-9892-0 
DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 

Cover photos: Stephan Bachenheimer/World Bank (6, 8, 10, 12); Shynar letpissova/World Bank (1); 
Romel Simon/World Bank (7, 9); Dana Smillie/World Bank (2, 3, 4, 5, 11)—top row is 1-4, middle row 
is 5-8, and bottom row is 9-12, all from left to right. 

Cover design: Naylor Design. 

Library of Congress Cataioging-in-Publication Data 
Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria. 

On norms and agency : conversations about gender equality with women and men in 20 countries / Ana 
Maria Munoz Boudet, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk with Angelica Thumala. 
p. cm. 

Includes bibliographical references. 

ISBN 978-0-8213-9862-3 — ISBN 978-0-8213-9892-0 (electronic) 

1. Sex role. 2. Sex discriminaUon against women. 3. Women’s rights I Title 
HQ1075.M866 2013 

305.3—dc23 -jni inaQa-ra 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 





Contents 


Foreword (Rachel Kyte] ix 

Foreword (Judith Rodin) xi 

Acknowledgments xiii 

About the Authors xvii 

Abbremations xix 

Introduction The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 1 

The Study Approach 4 

Methodology of the Study 5 

Discussing and Researching Gender Equality; 

A Brief Introduction to the Primary Study Concepts 10 

Creating and Enforcing Gender through Norms, 

Roles, and Beliefs 15 

Overview of Chapters 19 

Notes 21 

References 22 

PART I Gender Norms 27 

Chapter 1 The Rules We Live By: Gender Norms and Ideal Images 33 

Normative Erameworks for Elousehold Gender Inequalities 33 
The Good Girl, the Good Boy 41 

Community-Level Views of Gender Norms 45 

Notes 51 

References 52 

Chapter 2 Negotiating the Norms That Bind: A Winding Road 53 

The Quiet Relaxing and Changing of Norms 54 

Timing Is All: Negotiating Opportunities and 

Gender-Specific Responsibilities 56 

Intergenerational Transmission of the Possibility of Change 64 
Gender Norms in Transition 66 

“A Woman Should Be Beaten if She Deserves Punishment” 70 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


Contents 



Notes 

79 


References 

80 

PART II 

Having and Making Choices 

83 

Chapter 3 

Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 

Investing in Education: Why Should Girls and Boys 

87 


Go to School? 

88 


Why Should I Leave School? Not My Choice! 

93 


From School to Work: Getting the First Job 
“First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, 

97 


Then Comes Baby in a Baby Carriage” 

What Is Mine Is Yours: Asset Control and 

101 


Decision-Making 

113 


When Does Choice Mean Agency? 

119 


Notes 

121 


References 

123 

PART III 

Empowerment 

127 

Chapter 4 

Wdiat Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 

Step by Step: Climbing the “Ladder of 

131 


Power and Freedom” 

131 


Perceptions of Factors Shaping Agency 

139 


Combinations ot Mobility Factors 

Men’s and Women’s Interdependent Agency and 

144 


Gender Norm Change 

156 


Notes 

158 


References 

159 

Chapter 5 

Structures of Opportunity and Structures of Constraint 

161 


Community Factors That Fuel Agency 

163 


Whose Jobs? 

It Takes a Village: Local Economic Dynamism and 

164 


Empowerment 

Impact of Laws and Local Civic Action on 

170 


Empowerment 

179 


Change Women Need 

190 


Notes 

192 


References 

193 

Final Thoughts 

195 

Appendix 

Methodological Note 

201 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


Contents vjj 

Boxes 

1.1 It’s Not Sex, It’s Gender; From Biology to Learned Behaviors 11 

1.2 Quick Glossary ^ 19 

PI.l What Is Gender Equality? Views from the Ground 29 

1.1 Nontraditional Households 38 

2.1 Co-Existence of Norms and Support for Women’s Work 

Outside the Home in Islamic Communities 67 

3.1 Choosing Not to Change Things 120 

4.1 Challenges with Measuring Social Change from Below 133 

5.1 The Roma of Kragujevac: Where Disadvantages and Strict 

Norms Overlap and Trap 173 

5.2 Public and Private Power 189 

Figures 

1.1 World Development Report 2012 Analytical Framework 5 

BPI. 1.1 Equality between a Woman and a Man? 29 

1.1 Characteristics of a Good Wife and a Good Husband 35 

1.2 Characteristics of a Good Girl 42 

1.3 Characteristics of a Good Boy 42 

1.4 Characteristics of a Bad Girl 44 

1.5 Characteristics of a Bad Boy 44 

1.6 Perceptions of What Women’s Role Should Be 46 

2.1 Perceptions of the Prevalence of Domestic Violence against 

Women in the Study Communities 73 

2.2 Reports of Eorms of Domestic Abuse against Women 73 

2.3 Causes and Consequences of Violence, Women’s Eocus Group 

in Ba Dinh District of Hanoi, Vietnam 74 

2.4 Perceptions of Reasons for Domestic Violence 75 

3.1 Ideal Level of Education Reported by Adolescent Boys and 

Girls in the Study 90 

3.2 Who Makes the Decision for Children to Leave School? 93 

3.3 Who Decides When Young Adults or Adolescents 

Eirst Go to Work? 98 

3.4 Who Decides on Number of Children? 108 

3.5 Sex Preference for Children 111 

3.6 Who Controls Judith’s Money? 114 

4.1 Representative Ladder of Power and Freedom 

[Both Women’s and Men’s] 136 

4.2 Outcomes of All Men’s and Women’s Ladders in 

Urban and Rural Communities 138 

4.3 Average Mobility Index of Men’s and Women’s Ladders in 

Rural and Urban Communities 139 

4.4 Urban Upward Mobility Factors 140 

4.5 Rural Upward Mobility Factors 141 


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viii 


4.6 Urban Downward Mobility Factors 

4.7 Rural Downward Mobility Factors 

5.1 Average Mobility Index 

5.2 Mobility on Ladders in More Prosperous and 

Poorer Communities 

5.3 Rates of Women Working for Pay with Twin 

Climbing and Falling 

5.4 Most-Mentioned Factors Affecting Access to Jobs in the 

Local Labor Market, According to the Men’s and Women’s 
Focus Groups 

5.5 Perception of Discrimination by Sex in the Labor Markets 

5.6 New Gender Laws 

5.7 Where People Turn for Help with Family Conflict 

5.8 Median Economic Groups (Producer, Trade, and Finance) 

in Different Empowerment Contexts 

Map 

Map 1.1 Economies Included in the Qualitative Assessment of Gender 
Differences 


Tables 

1.1 Qualitative Assessment Sample 

1.2 Summary of Methodology 

1.1 Characteristics of a Good Wife and Good Husband Described 

by Adult Men and Women in Ba Dinh District, Vietnam 

3.1 Age of Marriage for Women and Men in Focus Group 

Communities 

3.2 Age of Men and Women at Birth of First Child 

3.3 Number of Children of Mother Compared with 

Desired Fertility for Self 

4.1 Top and Bottom Steps of Women’s and Men’s Ladders of 

Power and Freedom in Jaipur (Odisha), India 

5.1 Number of Ladders in Each Mobility Category by 

Sex and Location 

5.2 Desirable and Undesirable Jobs in Three Urban Communities 

A. 1 Communities in the Sample 


Contents 


142 

143 
163 

165 

166 


167 

168 
181 
183 

187 


2 


7 

8 

36 

103 

106 

110 

148 

163 

177 

203 


On Norms and Agency • http;//dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


Foreword (Rachel Kyte) 


As part of the World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, 
the World Bank launched a new study: more than 4,000 women, men, girls, and 
boys from 97 communities in 20 countries across the world came together to 
discuss how women and men make decisions and how social norms shape every¬ 
day lives. These discussions underscored how informal gender norms, traditions, 
and beliefs govern and constrain behaviors and perceptions about one’s place in 
the world. The power and freedom to take risks, seize opportunities, and shape 
one’s life [or “agency,” as it is called) can be determined as much by social norms 
such as gender roles as by the political and economic conditions of the communi¬ 
ties and countries in which one lives. This book provides in-depth analysis of 
these rich discussions. 

The findings are important for our work at the World Bank Group. It is part 
of our mandate to foster social inclusion for sustainable development and inte¬ 
grate gender considerations in the design, implementation, and monitoring of our 
projects. I would like to highlight in particular three findings. 

First, thanks to expanding education opportunities, children today are think¬ 
ing differently about their futures. This is most apparent among girls. Even in 
remote and poor villages of India and Togo, both girls and boys alike aspire to be 
scientists, lawyers, business leaders, or politicians. And girls, even in larger 
numbers than boys, ideally wish to earn graduate degrees. Girls and young 
women think that housework ought to be a responsibility shared by both sexes. 
The adolescents, both girls and boys, want to make their own choices in life. Their 
aspirations today are an invaluable resource for future gender equality outside 
and inside of households. We have to do much better than in the past to 
recognize and support their aspirations. 

Second, and quite related, women report that they are gaining power and 
freedom in their lives. And when asked why, women most often refer to their 
own economic independence, and to taking forward new attitudes and behaviors 
that are more confident and purposeful. They know about their role and what 
they want to achieve. This can mean for some gaining a seat at the dinner table, 
for others sending daughters to high school, and still others the ability to thrive 
in a job outside the home. Women every bit as much as men consider jobs to be 
central to gaining more control and status for themselves. We heard this from 
women across the world, from Yemeni villages to Polish cities. 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


ix 


Foreword (Rachel Kyte) 


Finally, with the notable exception of rural men, we see from this study that 
most participants at least nominally say “yes” to the ideal of equality between a 
man and a woman. Yet, many women around the world still lack the knowledge 
and wherewithal to realize their rights, especially the right to be safe from 
physical and emotional abuse. In almost a third of the nearly 100 communities in 
this study, domestic violence is perceived to be a regular or frequent affair for 
women. We can and must do far more to safeguard women’s physical and 
emotional integrity through actions such as making better laws and—most 
importantly—better enforcing them. 

While the study shows how much still needs to be done, it delivers a strong 
message that gender equality has the potential to transform societies and place 
communities and countries on a trajectory toward a better, more inclusive, and 
sustainable development. It is up to each and every one of us to make 
this happen. 

Rachel Kyte 

Vice President of the Sustainable Development Network 
World Bank 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


Foreword (Judith Rodin) 


The World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development offered 
a critical message; that effective policy making and unwavering focus on prog¬ 
ress and persistence in achieving gender equality matter greatly for beneficial 
development outcomes. In the past quarter century, we have seen remarkable 
gains for women. Women now represent 40 percent of the global labor force. 
Women are living longer than men all around the world. And gender gaps in 
education, once prevalent, are reversing with increasing enrollment of girls and 
young women. 

But even with this progress, gender disparities still persist in access to oppor¬ 
tunity and resources, and in terms of individual agency. This World Bank report. 
On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and 
Men in 20 Countries, provides tremendous insight on gender norms—an area 
that has been resistant to change, and that constrains achievement of gender 
equality across many diverse cultures. The report synthesizes data collected 
from more than 4,000 women and men in 97 communities across 20 countries. 
It is the largest dataset ever collected on the topic of gender and development, 
providing an unprecedented opportunity to examine potential patterns across 
communities on social norms and gender roles, pathways of empowerment, 
and factors that drive acute inequalities. The analysis raises the profile of 
persistent social norms and their impact on agency, and catalyzes discourse on 
the many pathways that create opportunities for women and men to negotiate 
transformative change. 

The report is underpinned by the fact that arguably the single most impor¬ 
tant contribution to development is to unleash the full power of half the 
people on the planet—women. It underscores how crucial making investments 
in learning, supporting innovations that reduce the time costs of women’s 
mobility, and developing a critical mass of women and men pushing the bound¬ 
aries of entrenched social norms are in enhancing women’s agency and capacity 
to aspire. 

We know that women need the tools of development, but development also 
needs women. All the disadvantages that women experience around the world, 
from poverty to violence, from ill health to illiteracy, also limit the advancement 
of families, communities, and entire nations. 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


xi 


Foreword (Judith Rodin) 


xii 


The Rockefeller Foundation is pleased to continue our collaboration with 
the World Bank through this report, and proud to have supported its research 
and production. We commend it to all who believe in building a more equitable 
and resilient world for the well-being of humanity. 

Judith Rodin 
President 

The Rockefeller Foundation 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


Acknowledgments 


This research draws on the contributions of many people who supported a 
20-country rapid qualitative assessment titled “Defining Gender in the 21st 
Century: Talking with Women and Men around the World, A Multi-Country 
Qualitative Study of Gender and Economic Choice.” First and foremost, we need 
to thank the 4,000 women and men and boys and girls who joined in nearly 500 
focus groups. We asked very much of them, and they graciously shared their time 
and opinions with us. 

The project was led and managed by Carolyn Turk. The core team also 
included Ana Maria Munoz Boudet, Patti Petesch, Angelica Thumala, and Maria 
Beatriz Orlando. Valuable research assistance was provided by Paula Barros, 
Greta Gober, Gwendolyn Meaner, Rudy Herrera Marmol, Roberto Miranda, and 
Bethany Timmons. 

We gratefully acknowledge the World Development Report 2012 (WDR) team 
that initiated and supported this project throughout, including the WDR 
co-directors Ana Revenga and Sudhir Shetty, and the team—Luis Benveniste, 
Aline Coudouel, Jishnu Das, Markus Goldstein, and Carolina Sanchez Paramo. 
We also extend appreciation to Elisabeth Huybens of the Social Development 
Unit for Europe and Central Asia and Cyprian Fisiy with the Social Development 
Network team for hosting this publication project. 

The “Defining Gender” data collection effort included national research 
teams from around the world led by Chona Echavez and Pierre Eallavier 
(AREU, Afghanistan); Ugyen Lhamo (Druk Associates, Bhutan); Jean-Fran^ois 
Kobiane (Institut Superieur des Sciences de la Population [ISSP], Universite 
de Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso); Magaly Pineda and Sergia Galvan (Centro de 
Investigacion para la Accion Femenina [CIPAF], Santo Domingo, the 
Dominican Republic); Priya Chattier (The University of South Pacific, Suva, 
Fiji); Sanjeev Sasmal and Sulbha Khanna (Sutra Consulting, India); Rizki 
Fillaili (SMERU, Jakarta, Indonesia); Gwendolyn Meaner (GK Consulting, 
research on Liberia); Dumitru Slonovschi (Magenta Consulting, Moldova); 
Patricia Zarate (Institute de Estudios Peruanos, Peru); Sarnia M. Al-Botmeh 
and Lamis Abunahleh (Centre for Development Studies, Birzeit University, 
Ramallah, West Bank and Gaza); Paul Barker, Marjorie Andrew, and Almah 
Tararia (Institute of National Affairs, Papua New Guinea); Greta Gober 
(Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, research on Poland); 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


xiii 


xiv 


Acknowledgments 


Hana Baronijan and Sasa Jovancevic (IPSOS, Serbia); Imraan Valodia and 
Kruschen Govender [School of Development Studies, University of 
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa); Mohamed Braima and Khalil Al Medani 
[Sudanese Organization for Education, Sudan); Adalbertus Kamanzi 
[CORDEMA, Tanzania); Giovanna Declich [Togo); Hhuat Tha Hong and 
Einh Tran [Institute for Social Development Studies, Hanoi Vietnam); and 
Ramzia Aleryani, Sabria Al-Thwar, and Mai Abdulmalik [Yemeni Women 
Union, Sana’a, the Republic ol Yemen). 

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research [IWPR) team, led by Jane Henrici 
and Allison Helmuth, helped with the original data coding and analysis. Amanda 
Lubold and Charles Ragin contributed with the qualitative comparative 
analysis. 

Jeni Klugman, Director of Poverty Reduction and Economic Management 
[PREM) Gender, provided valuable support. Peer reviewers included Kathleen 
Beegle, Aline Coudouel, Maitreyi Das, Karla HoR^ Naila Kabeer, and Deepa 
Narayan. We also appreciated comments from Sarah Haddock, Dominique van 
de Walle, Rasmus Heltberg, and Elizaveta Perova, among others. 

Getting this large research initiative off the ground in time to meet the WDR’s 
production schedule was a major task. World Bank staff from acrc»s regions and 
sectors responded quickly and helpfully with guidance on research design, local 
research partners, data analysis, and myriad technical and administrative needs. 
Our very special thanks go to Dean Joliffe, Andy Kotikula, Tara Vishwanath, 
Nandini Krishnan, Abdalwahab Khatib, Andy Mason, Trang Nguyen, Shubha 
Chakravarty, Erol Graham, Iris Boutros, Mia Hyun, Yulia Immajati, Hesti Marsono, 
Dan Mont, Nicholas Menzies, Nora Dudwick, Owen Ozier, Andrea Gallina, 
Valery Vega, Roby Senderowitsch, Dan Owen, Sophia Georgieva, Hadyiat 
El-Tayeb Alyn, Trine Lunde, Arun Joshi, Adama Ouedrago, Sophia Georgieva, Liz 
Ninan, Chris Thomas, Maria Elena Garcia Mora, Elena Bardasi, Vivek Suri, and 
Michael Woolcock. The team also consulted experts outside the World Bank, 
including Lori Heise, David Crocker, Vanessa Gray, and Janice Newberry. 

This publication was made possible thanks to the support of the Rockefeller 
Foundation. The study benefited greatly from a research workshop conducted 
with the lead researchers from 18 countries at the Rockefeller Foundation’s 
Bellagio Center. A special thanks for making this possible goes to the Bellagio 
Center and Rockefeller Foundation teams, in particular to Heather Grady, 
Sundaa Bridgett-Jones, and Bethany Martin-Breen. We are also grateful for dis¬ 
cussions with the Rockefeller Foundation’s team, their relevant comments, sup¬ 
port, and patience through the preparation of this book. 

The team is also grateful for the financial support provided to the World 
Development Report 2012 that made possible the collection of our unique dataset, 
including the Government of Norway through its Royal Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs, Australian Agency for International Development, Canadian International 
Development Agency, the Government of Sweden through its Ministry for 
Foreign Affairs, the Nike Foundation, and the Fast Track Initiative Education 
Program Development Fund. 

On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


Acknowledgments 


XV 


Our great thanks go to Kristin Hunter’s editorial work on successive drafts, 
and the Directions in Development production team. We also thank the resource 
management team of Sonia Joseph and Evangeline Santo Domingo, and Cecile 
Wodon, Rebecca Sugui, Mihaela Stangu, and Elizabeth Acul for ongoing help 
with coordination. 

Despite our efforts to compile a comprehensive list, some who contributed 
may have been inadvertently omitted. The team apologizes for any oversights 
and reiterates its gratitude to all who contributed to this research. 



Rockefeller Foundation 


Innovation for the Next 100 Years 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 





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About the Authors 


Ana Maria Munoz Boudet is a World Bank consultant. She was a core team 
member ot the World Development Report 2012 and co-author of Latin America 
and Central America gender reports. She has worked on gender and poverty 
issues in the Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, and 
Africa Regions. Prior to joining the Bank, she worked for the Inter-American 
Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 
and was a researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). 
Ana Maria holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and is 
in the process of completing her PhD at the University College of London. 

Patti Petesch is a World Bank consultant. She specializes in qualitative field 
research on poverty, gender, conflict, and participatory development. Her recent 
research explores factors that enlarge individual and collective empowerment at 
the local level, and the contribution of these processes to local democracy, 
poverty reduction, gender equaUty, and more secure and prosperous communi¬ 
ties and nations. She was study coordinator and co-author of the World Bank’s 
Voices of the Poor and Moving Out of Poverty global research programs, and 
co-author of On Norms and Agency companion reports on West Bank and Gaza 
and the Republic of Yemen. She recently published “Reflections on Global and 
Local Pathways to Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality: The Good, 
the Bad, and the Sticky” [Ethics and Social Welfare). 

Carolyn Turk is the World Bank’s country manager for Rwanda and was the 
Lead Social Development Specialist and Acting Sector Manager in the World 
Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Social Development Department when this 
research started. She is an expert in poverty policy analysis, including quantita¬ 
tive and qualitative instruments, statistical capacity building, national strategic 
planning and budgeting processes, and design and implementation of social 
accountability tools. Prior to joining the Bank she was Senior Planning Officer in 
the Ministry of Finance in Papua New Guinea, Deputy Director of Action Aid, 
and Social Development Adviser at the U.K. Department for International 
Development (DFID). She has earned undergraduate and postgraduate degrees 
from Cambridge University in the economics and politics of development. 

Maria Angelica Thumala is a Lecturer at the Sociology Department of the 
Catholic University of Chile and Research Associate at the Centre for 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


xvii 


xviii 


About the Authors 


Criminology of the University of Oxford. She currently teaches sociology of 
gender and ethnographic and qualitative research methods. As a consultant for 
the World Bank, she has contributed to the West Bank and Gaza and the 
Republic of Yemen gender reports for the Middle East and North Africa Region. 
She has also published on consumption, cultural change, development, and 
religion in Latin America. Angelica holds a PhD in Sociology from the University 
of Cambridge and an MA in philosophy and social theory from the 
University of Warwick. 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


Abbreviations 


IDP 

internally displaced persons 

INR 

Indian rupees 

NGO 

nongovernmental organization 

OECD 

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 

QCA 

qualitative comparative analysis 

SACCOs 

savings and credit cooperatives 

SAR 

special administrative region 

SHG 

self-help group 

UNDP 

United Nations Development Programme 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


XIX 








INTRODUCTION 


The Norms of Power and the Power of 
Norms 


Two of the many questions asked at the earliest stages of preparing the 
World Bank’s (2012) World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and 
Development were how do women and men make decisions about their economic 
participation, and how do we learn about this. To try to answer them, the World 
Bank launched a small qualitative field study in four countries. The objective was 
to find out what women and men saw as the main forces driving their decisions 
on economic participation—from how they used their time to their ability to 
start a business. The exercise quickly expanded to an unprecedented “bottom-up” 
exploration of how women and men make decisions in all dimensions of life; 
how gender differences are experienced; and how these differences, dictated by 
social norms, shape women’s and men’s everyday lives. The research covered 
20 economies from all world regions and more than 4,000 participants in 
97 communities—from remote and traditional villages in Papua New Guinea, 
the Republic of Yemen, and Liberia, to urban neighborhoods in Vietnam, Poland, 
and Peru (see map I.l).' In each country, local researchers organized about 500 
focus groups to elicit information about the impact of gender norms on women 
and men and about the effect on their sense of agency and empowerment, and 
to learn about the changes in women’s and men’s lives as these gender norms 
flexed or persisted. 

Gender equality in these 20 countries has increased in many domains. Like 
changes documented for most of the world, girls are staying in school longer than 
their mothers did. More women are economically active, and their participation 
in local networks and civic organizations has increased. And many women feel 
that they have more control over their lives. Yet, significant gender disparities are 
still evident: intrahousehold allocations of time, responsibilities, and power are 
unequally distributed among men and women. Almost everywhere, men remain 
the primary income earners in their households, as well as the main decision¬ 
makers. And there are countries and communities where income poverty, 
conflict situations, rurality, or distance increase these existing gender gaps.^ 


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1 


2 


The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


Equality means that both the husband and wife have equal rights to make 
choices in their lives. 

—Urban woman, Fiji 

[Equality for my daughter allows her] to have power, an education, 
and ... more opportunities. 

—Rural woman, Peru 


Map 1.1 Economies Included in the Qualitative Assessment of Gender Differences 


f 




... 








r: 






<1 


.Poland 
* .^Moldova 
^Serbia 


Afghanistan 




iy«t Bank and daza 


Dominican 


^Republic 


Peru^^ 


Sudan 

- , . _ (Northern) 

Burbina Fas<^ 

. ... 

'1 . Liberia’ 


% 


Rep. of 
Yemen 


Tanzania 


Bhutan 

Vietnam 

^ndia \ ‘ 4 . 

(Odsfa. f 
AiMttt - ^ f} 

fhttdethl . 

A" 

Indooesta 

dakotia, 


IBRD 39636 

October i012 




Papua New 
JSuinea 




^South Africa 

Sumaiera Bamt) 




{Kwozulu-Notal) 






I Countries and regions where WDR qualitative assessments were carried out . 




Source- World Bank. 


Our study findings reveal that behind the progress toward gender equality and 
persistent gender gaps lies an almost universal set of factors embedded in social 
and gender norms, as heard in the experiences related by focus group partici¬ 
pants. Women’s and men’s opportunities and actions are determined as much by 
social norms—including gender roles and beliefs about their abilities and capaci¬ 
ties—as by the conditions of the communities and countries they live in. 

The narratives from the sample communities show many commonalities across 
countries and cultures in how gender differences define women’s and men’s roles 
and dictate responsibilities in households, markets, and public life in their com¬ 
munities. They also reveal how innumerable social and cultural norms, traditions, 
beliefs, and general perceptions of the appropriate place and behavior for women 
and men permeate all aspects of community and individual life. These informal 
institutions [so named in World Development Report 2012] interlock with civic 
institutions, the institutions of the state, the market, and intrahousehold bargaining 
dynamics to shape and sometimes reinforce the gender inequities of power —and 
impact the choices and freedom of women and girls [and men and boys). 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


3 


Social norms play a central role in the relation between people’s agency and 
the opportunities that their communities provide. Social norms can either help 
or hinder an individual’s capacity to take advantage of available opportunities. 
Certain ideas or images that reflect ideal behaviors for men and women are 
remarkably similar across countries and locations within countries. Adolescents 
participating in the study reported little variation in the different tasks and 
behaviors demanded in order to be seen as a “good girl’’ or “good boy”—whether 
they live in a remote highlands village in Papua New Guinea or in a busy city in 
the Dominican Republic. Likewise, adult views of a “good wife” or a “good 
husband” reiterate a clear distinction between productive and reproductive 
gender roles, as well as expected feminine or masculine behaviors [loving and 
caring versus having authority and providing well). 

Yet everyday practices also include different forms of resistance to—and 
flexibility about—ideal gender roles. Negotiation and resistance to gender norms 
are evident throughout the study sample. Inasmuch as they imply a challenge to 
the sexual division of power, departures from the norm can sometimes be harshly 
punished. Among the consequences of conflict over gender roles or norm 
abiding, the most disempowering one is violence against women. 

The change in women’s ability to participate and have a voice in strategic life 
choices, especially in education and reproduction, is reflected both in women’s 
achievements and in their aspirations. Education, employment, and family for¬ 
mation are the primary areas where women see their agency and ability to decide 
expanding. The autonomy of young girls and boys appears to be greater than in 
previous generations, and their ambitions differ from current practices in their 
communities, from age at marriage to number of children to level of schooling. 
But it is among girls and young women where these changes are most evident. 

Increased agency allows women to move from enduring complete compliance 
with constraining and unequal gender norms, to questioning those norms in the 
face of potential opportunities, to changing their aspirations, as well as their abil¬ 
ity to seek and achieve desired outcomes. While women have increased their 
perceived empowerment and freedom in many countries, more so than men, this 
change does not always alter constraining norms. 

Inequalities derived from gender norms and lack of capacity to decide 
(agency) affect perceptions of power and freedom. The main pathways to 
increased perception of empowerment that we can identify from the focus group 
narratives combine control over material and personal life conditions with a 
favorable structure of opportunities. While these are equally relevant to men and 
women, men depend largely on the economic conditions of their communities 
to feel empowered, more so than women. 

In a more enabling environment, which not only creates more opportunities 
but also changes the individual’s capacity to aspire to access them, normative 
change is more Ukely. For example, women’s economic participation has the 
potential to alter traditional definitions of gender roles, duties, and responsibili¬ 
ties, but it can also change the main components of both men’s and women’s 
identities. 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


The Study Approach 

This study is based on the assumption that gender equality is a development 
objective in its own right as much as it is instrumental to the achievement of 
such development. Following Amartya Sen’s [2002] notion of development as 
expanding freedoms equally for all people, our study assumes that the freedom 
to pursue a life of one’s own choosing is a key component of development. 
In other words, we see development as connected to the freedom to enjoy a 
genuine set of opportunities and choices. In a similar vein, Nussbaum (1999) 
frames the challenge for development around liberty, but also notes that skewed 
preferences due to persistent gender inequalities impact girls’ and women’s 
liberty. Particularly in poor countries, this shows up in the gap between formal 
rights and the absence of basic material conditions necessary to realize those 
rights.^ The intrinsic value of gender equality lies in increasing both women’s and 
men’s choices, autonomy, and self-efficacy, as well as their exercise and use of 
equal rights. 

The instrumental value of gender equality—the benefits that a more equal 
society obtains in terms of the productivity, inclusive institutions, and well-being 
of future generations, among others—is rigorously explored in World Development 
Report. 2012. Empowering women does indeed provide benefits for the well¬ 
being of societies. However, as Duflo [2011] notes, the relationship between 
economic development and women’s empowerment is not always a virtuous one. 
Empowering women does indeed change society’s and households’ choices in 
ways that are beneficial for their members, but not in all cases: it is not always 
women who make the best decisions for long-term development. 

If we think of gender equality as a result of gains in three dimensions— 
endowments, economic opportunities, and agency—then this equality is largely 
dependent on the interactions between four institutions: households, formal state 
institutions, markets, and informal institutions. Following a graphic representa¬ 
tion of this conceptual framework from World Development Report 2012 
[figure I.l], our study zooms in on the specific interactions between social norms 
and agency with a focus on the household. 

Women’s agency, while a central element of gender equality, is an area where 
more research is needed and where less information is available. Several studies 
have been conducted on empowerment and on some agency components, but 
many questions remain."* The analysis in our report seeks to contribute to this 
body of literature by looking at agency and social norms together. Of all factors 
driving gender inequalities, these two seem to be the most elusive in helping 
direct policy interventions and measurement. Our findings align with Kabeer 
[2001] and the difficulties that appear when attempting to measure agency. First, 
it is not sufficient to learn about women’s ability to make choices without look¬ 
ing at the extent their agency is reflected in their life choices and the conditions 
under which they exercise their agency. Second, context matters: without looking 
at context, it is not possible to assess the extent their agency has increased or not. 
The need to focus on context makes cross-country analysis more difficult. Finally, 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


5 


Figure 1.1 lVorWDeve/opmentReporf2072 Analytical Framework 



Informal 
institutions 
and social 
norms 


'Economic! 

pportunitias 


Households 


Markets 


Agency [Endowmei 


Formal 

institutions 




Source: Adapted from World Bank 2012,9. 



changes in agency are not clear predictors of processes of normative change if the 
structures of opportunities and constraints are not taken into account. 

This study deals with these difficulties within the scope allowed by its cross¬ 
country sample and methodology. As presented in more detail later, we provide 
a foundation for a systematic exploration of agency by looking at the structures 
of constraint, or the norms that underpin gender inequalities, and the negotia¬ 
tions that surround these norms (part 1}. We also look at different life choices 
where changes in the capacity to decide are reflected (part II]. And finally, we 
attempt to offer a more dynamic and complete view of the process and determi¬ 
nants of changes in power and agency, as they are perceived by individuals within 
their specific community setting (part III). 

By exploring how gender norms and roles shape women’s (and men’s) agency 
and empowerment, their decision-making at critical junctures in their lives, their 
perceived ability to gain power, and their economic opportunities, new entry 
points for policy design can be found, as well as ways to recraft existing develop¬ 
ment policies to become more effective and better serve women’s needs. The 
common patterns we found across countries have important implications for 
policy design and action. 

Methodology of the Study 

Our study assesses qualitatively the dynamics of gender norms and agency in the 
construction of gender equality. The research was designed to capture men’s and 
women’s perspectives and their own accounts of how they experience gender 
differences in their households and communities. 

The methodology we chose builds directly on two major global studies 
at the World Bank, Voices of the Poor (Narayan, Patel, et al. 2000; Narayan, 
Chambers, et al. 2000; Narayan and Petesch 2002) and Moving Out of Poverty 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


(Narayan and Petesch 2007, 2010; Narayan, Pritchett, and Kapoor 2009; 
Narayan 2009; Narayan and Petesch 2010]. These works apply primarily qualita¬ 
tive techniques, such as focus groups and individual interviews, to examine ques¬ 
tions of poverty and how people move out of poverty across diverse contexts in 
the developing world. A guiding principle for these studies, as with this one, is 
the focus on learning inductively from local individuals’ experiences and inter¬ 
pretations of their own reality. We wanted to work from a vantage point that 
gives primacy to local people’s own perceptions and interpretations of their 
experiences. For this study, we aimed to capture local narratives of different situ¬ 
ations where gender differences come into play without imposing pre-conceived 
concepts and models. 

The research was conducted in 20 different countries, using the same data 
collection instruments and the same set of questions for all cases, which permitted 
a multi-country assessment of similarities, trends, and patterns. A set of research 
instruments was developed including three focus group interview guides—one for 
each of the three different age groups included in the study, as well as a separate 
questionnaire for the key informant in each community; the same set of instru¬ 
ments was used in all countries to ensure comparability.^ Changes to adapt lan¬ 
guage or make additions that were more appropriate for local conditions were 
discussed between the local and global research teams to ensure that comparabil¬ 
ity was respected. The research strategy was flexible enough to capture bottom- 
up data from very different places and also to provide a reasonably adequate 
means for comparative analysis of the large volume of data collected.® The data 
collected was transcribed into text documents following a template provided by 
the global team and analyzed by a mix of techniques, including coding and inter¬ 
pretative analysis. To ensure validity, we verified conclusions [as suggested by 
Miles and Huberman 1994) and cross-checked them with the national reports by 
the local teams. However, it is important to note that this is, first and foremost, a 
subjective exploration; the samples are small and not statistically representative of 
each country or region. 

We chose 97 communities in the 20 countries to contribute to a unique 
dataset made up of men’s and women’s focus groups with three different age 
groups (more than 500 focus groups], pulled from remote mountain top villages 
in Bhutan to refugee camps in Sudan to urban neighborhoods in Vietnam and 
Poland [see table 1.1]. Sample countries were chosen opportunistically from all 
world regions and, when possible, from different realities within each region.^ 
However, the identification of the sample was also dependent on the availability 
of local research teams, funding, and time constraints determined by the 
production cycle of World Development Report 2012. 

The local research teams in each study country consisted of lead researchers 
with extensive country knowledge and qualitative field experience, plus experi¬ 
enced focus group facilitators who received training and followed a detailed 
methodology guide to conduct the fieldwork. In each country, the research teams 
identified the communities to survey, following the study guidelines, which 
included sampling communities from rural and urban areas and from different 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


7 


Table 1.1 Qualitative Assessment Sample 


Economy 

Communities 

Adults 

Focus groups 

Young adults Adolescents 

Total 

Total no. of individuals 
(est. 8 per group) 

In-depth 

cases 

Afghanistan 

4 

8 

8 

n.a. 

16 

128 

8 

Bhutan 

4 

8 

8 

8 

24 

192 

4 

Burkina Faso 

4 

8 

8 

8 

24 

192 

4 

Dominican Republic 

4 

8 

8 

8 

24 

192 

4 

Fiji 

6 

12 

12 

12 

36 

288 

6 

India 

8 

16 

16 

16 

48 

384 

8 

Indonesia 

4 

8 

8 

n.a. 

16 

128 

14 

Liberia 

9 

18 

18 

n.a. 

36 

288 

12 

Moldova 

4 

8 

8 

n.a. 

16 

128 

4 

Papua New Guinea 

6 

12 

12 

n.a. 

24 

192 

6 

Peru 

4 

8 

8 

n.a. 

16 

128 

5 

Poland 

4 

8 

8 

n.a. 

16 

128 

4 

Serbia 

5 

10 

10 

n.a. 

20 

160 

4 

South Africa 

4 

8 

8 

n.a. 

16 

128 

4 

Sudan 

5 

10 

10 

10 

30 

240 

4 

Tanzania 

4 

8 

8 

n.a. 

16 

128 

4 

Togo 

4 

8 

8 

8 

24 

192 

4 

Vietnam 

4 

8 

8 

n.a. 

16 

128 

4 

West Bank and Gaza 

6 

12 

12 

12 

36 

288 

6 

Yemen, Rep. 

4 

8 

8 

8 

24 

192 

4 

Total 

97 

194 

194 

90 

478 

3,824 

113 


Note: n.a. = not applicable. 

socioeconomic situations, and representing, when possible, different realities 
within the country [see the appendix). The teams were asked to sample a mini¬ 
mum of four communities to capture a better-off and poorer urban community, 
and a better-off and poorer rural community, which we hypothesized would 
provide a range of experiences that reflected the average situation of the country, 
fn some countries, this was done based on household survey data; in others, it was 
based on representation of different country regions. The choices of regions and 
geographic areas were discussed with the global team, and the sampling selection 
was approved to ensure consistency with the global sample. 

Within the communities, five different data collection tools were used: three 
structured focus group discussions, a key informant interview in the form of a 
community questionnaire with closed and open-ended questions, and a mini case 
study [see table 1.2). The three focus groups were structured by age: adolescents 
[12-17 years), young adults [18-24 years), and adults [25-60 years). Each age 
group was then divided into men’s and women’s groups. Field teams also 
received instructions to construct the groups, as much as possible, to reflect the 
range of educational and livelihood experiences common for each age group in 
the community. The research teams invited individuals to participate in the 
exercise through household visits, postings, and information given to community 
leaders among others. 

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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


Table 1.2 Summary of Methodology 


Data collection method 

Themes 

Respondents 

Community questionnaire 

Information on local context and changes in the structure 
of opportunities. 

1-2 key informants 

Focus group discussion 
with young adults 

• Flappiness 

• Daily time use (included hourly time use reporting by 3-5 focus 
group participants) 

• Decisions: transitions from school to work and family formation 

- Independence, cooperation, and obligations in economic 
decision-making processes 

- Divorce, family dispute resolution mechanisms 

- Local economic opportunities 

- Savings practices 

- Community participation 

- Knowledge of gender-related rights 

• Role models 

• Hopes for the future 

2 groups (ages 18-24): 

• 8-12 young adult 
women 

• 8-12 young adult 

men 

Focus group discussion 
with adults 

• Happiness 

• Differences in the exercise of power and freedom, with a focus 
on economic decisions (via exercise creating a "ladder of power 
and freedom") 

• Local economic opportunities 

• Independence, cooperation, and obligations in economic 
decision-making processes 

• Divorce, family-dispute resolution mechanisms 

• Sourcesof economic support 

• Household gender relations 

• General patterns of domestic and community violence 

• Hopes for the future 

2 groups (ages 25-60): 

• 8-12 women 

• 8-12 men 

Focus group discussion 
with adolescents 

• Happiness 

• Daily time use 

• Value of education 

• Aspirations for the future 

• Local economic opportunities 

• Savings, assets, and control of assets 

• Formation of families 

• Norms surrounding adolescent girls and boys 

• Domestic violence and public safety 

• Social networks 

2 groups (ages 12-17): 

♦ 8-12 adolescent 
girls 

• 8-12 adolescent 
boys 

Mini case study 

Detailed story of a finding that emerges as important for 

understanding gender norms or structures shaping economic 
decisions in that locality 

1-2 key informants 


Prior to initiating the focus groups, facilitators interviewed local key 
informants, identified during earlier community visits by asking local authorities 
and people from the community. These informants completed a community 
questionnaire to provide extensive background information about the sample 
communities. A key informant might be a community leader, government 
official, politician, important local employer, business or financial leader, teacher, 
or healthcare worker. At the end of their time in the communities, the research 
teams also collected “mini case studies” which were unstructured interviews with 
a focus group participant or someone else in the community who might 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


9 


understand the gender gains or inequalities in the community. Local teams were 
free to choose their case studies based on their knowledge of the community and 
the country. 

Each locus group, organized by sex and age, met separately. While the focus 
groups of young adults and adults were conducted in all 20 countries, only a sub¬ 
sample of nine countries included focus groups with adolescents. Focus groups 
discussed a wide range of topics, including reasons for happiness and favorite 
free-time activities; decisions surrounding when to leave school, where to work, 
and family formation; and gender differences in accumulating savings and con¬ 
trolling major assets. Questions also explored issues of domestic violence, public 
safety, and women’s physical mobility. One research module charted how young 
adult women and men spend their days, and another explored different levels of 
power and freedom that adult women or men might have in their communities. 
Some questions were posed to all three age groups; others were specific to one 
group. Table 1.2 summarizes the main topics that were addressed to the different 
groups. Each topic was covered by a set of questions and exercises. 

In order to limit bias, which can be introduced by focus group dynamics, 
facilitators received training in additional measures to foster inclusive discussions 
that would capture a range of attitudes and experiences common in the specific 
communities. For some key questions, for instance, focus group members had 
opportunities to respond by “voting” in private and then volunteering to discuss 
their responses. 

We designed the study methodology to account for the dynamics of gender 
relations and social norms in the study communities. Understanding that gender 
norms influence everyone’s behaviors as much as their expectations about how 
the opposite sex behaves, we kept groups separated by sex. Likewise, different 
age groups were assessed separately to account for generational differences and 
avoid power imbalances. We hoped to give all participants a safe environment 
where they felt free to express their thoughts and interact openly about life situ¬ 
ations that they may not normally reflect upon.^ For example, when we asked 
women in Afghanistan to describe their preferences and interests regarding mar¬ 
riage or childbearing decisions, the research format first captured their initial 
accounts. Then discussion leaders posed further questions to encourage them to 
probe beneath the face value of their accounts—for instance, from a power 
perspective—so that they could begin to identify the set of values and other 
norms affecting their decisions. In many cases, what was accepted as the “norm” 
was far from what the women desired or what they considered right. Focus group 
participants were also invited to corroborate or refute each other’s views. 

In order to move beyond a static view, or a single moment in time, and capture 
dynamics of change, all groups were asked at different stages to compare condi¬ 
tions today on key study topics with conditions 10 years ago or between the 
current and previous generations. They also reported on their aspirations for their 
own future and the future of their children. 

The study findings reflect the range of norms possible in the 20 countries 
rather than the average situation in each individual country case. However, 

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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


the global findings of the research are more telling and consistent, which in many 
areas can be extended to other settings. The consistency of the descriptions of 
gender norms and associated behaviors, and the relationship between norms and 
agency, and how these elements interact to generate opportunities or limit equal¬ 
ity between men and women in the communities studied, shed light on similar 
inequalities in other contexts and the processes behind them. 

Parallel to quantitative analysis of gender dimensions in development, the 
insights derived from qualitative methods expand the information available on 
questions related to norms and to intrahousehold and community-level dynamics. 
In particular, contextual factors and their interactions with the deeper influences 
of power relations and norms on women’s and men’s decisions are difficult 
topics for even well-designed household surveys to explore effectively. Yet, the 
scarcity of information on the role of these complex factors limits our under¬ 
standing of these issues and possible levers for policy action. This is the area 
where we see our research contributing the most. 


Discussing and Researching Gender Equality: A Brief Introduction 
to the Primary Study Concepts 

Throughout this report, certain concepts—social norms, agency, empowerment, 
and structure of opportunities, among others—appear over and over. We explore 
their interrelation by using the voices of the participants in the study as they 
reflect on the contexts and realities of their different communities. However, 
there is not only one way to understand these concepts. We briefly review differ¬ 
ent views of norms, agency, and power, and the reasons gender norms have such 
a decisive hold on women, men, and the societies where they live. 

The powerful influence of gender norms on an individual’s actions—a central 
area of concern in gender research—is one of the foundations of gender inequahty. 
As Ridgeway (2009] notes, gender is a core frame for organizing social relations 
and, as such, it depends on common knowledge (i.e., cultural knowledge] that 
guides and coordinates individuals’ actions in a given situation. But these frame¬ 
works deem women and men unequal, based on their perceived differences. 

Inequality is a feature of all societies, whether it is unequal power, opportuni¬ 
ties, outcomes, or justice. Most societies have structures and institutions whose 
role is to preserve the prevalent social order or organizing framework. Gender 
inequality is no exception. The inequalities that arise from the different roles 
played by women and men, the unequal power relationships between them, and 
the consequences of this inequality on their lives are visible in all societies. The 
problem is that these inequalities all too frequently pose disadvantages to 
women. Women face consistent differences between their opportunities and 
outcomes and the opportunities and outcomes of men. 

The point of departure for gender inequality is our biological difference, 
which is visible and in most cases easily distinguishable. But it is less easy to find 
a cut-off point between the biological and the social distinction as a basis for 
gender inequality. Benhabib et al. [1995] rightly notes that, while equality 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


ot condition seems to be the ideal, in many societies today, the more equal 
conditions are, the less explanation there is for the remaining differences—-to the 
point that inequality may end up being mistaken and merged with innate or 
natural qualities of men or women.^ Preferences, needs, and constraints can differ 
systematically between men and women, and this may reflect both biological 
sexual factors and learned gender behaviors [see box I.l). 


Box 1.1 It's Not Sex, It's Gender: From Biology to Learned Behaviors 

Researchers disagree on where gender differences come from. The observable differences 
between men and women, in areas such as risk aversion, trust leadership, moral behavior, 
attitudes about competition, and compassion, have been attributed to biological factors, 
learned preferences and behaviors, and consistent differences in opportunities.^ 

Opportunities have not been equally distributed among women and men. For example, 
the fact that girls have achieved so much progress in education is as much a shift in the distri¬ 
bution of opportunities as a change in society's view of what women and men are capable of 
doing. Most societies at different stages have resisted educating women. For some, educating 
women was not "natural": the reasons have ranged from ideas that women's nature does not 
include the ability to learn and that women do not need education to secure their future, to 
the idea that there is no need for incentives for educating women. Teaching women to read 
and write was considered wrong because "a learned lady threatened male pride."^ But today, 
most societies agree on the value of education for both girls and boys. 

In school, differences in performance between girls and boys have been explained by 
differences in their cognitive abilities, in forms of learning, in their aspirations, in their views on 
the value of education, and in teacher performance, among others.*^ For example, Hoff and 
Pandey (2006) look at how learned discrimination, in their study of Indian students of different 
castes, may affect performance on tests when caste is made salient, vis-a-vis when it is not.The 
authors find that when caste is identified or emphasized in a given setting or situation, low- 
caste students perform worse, reproducing the caste gap and hierarchy. Similar studies, where 
race, ethnic background, and gender have been used to trigger an expected response in an 
experimental setting, show similar results.*^ 

Gender equality, even if for the benefit of everyone's well-being, challenges the social 
foundation of inequality, as well as its "natural"—or biological—foundation. In the case of 
education, it not only contradicts the notion of who has the right to education but also chal¬ 
lenges ideas of who can join the qualified labor force (which now includes men and women) 
and what constitutes women's and men's appropriate place in society. . 

a. Gender differences have been analyzed experimentally in different areas of economics and under very different settings. 
Recent reviews of this literature include Ergun, Garcia-Munoz, and Rivas (2012); Croson and Gneezy (2009); and Eckel and 
Grossman (2008). Lippa (2005) provides a good summary of findings from the psychological and behavioral studies field. 

b. Labalme (1980,4). 

c. The Young Lives study (Dercon 2011) shows that parents have different aspirations for their children's educations than their 
children, and that the parents'aspirations are transmined and adopted by children. World Development Report 2012 cites the 
example of some English subject textbooks, currently in use in Australia and Hong Kong SAR, China, that tend to depict 
women in a limited range of social roles and present stereotyped images of women as weaker and operating primarily in 
domestic domains, and that may impact girls'aspirations. 

d. Among others, see Steele and Aronson (1995); Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady (1999); and Krendl et al. (2008). 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


Learned gender attributes make up gender identity and determine gender 
roles; they also may be valued differently generating a power imbalance. These 
“gender systems” (Ridgeway and Correll 2004; Ridgeway and Smith-Lovin 
1999), where gender is seen as an institutionalized system of social practices and 
organized social relations of inequality, are based on the different attributes 
associated with our biological differences. Gender systems are embedded in all 
societal institutions, from formal legal frameworks (such as family law or labor 
regulations) to religions and traditional culture. Through these systems, femininity 
and masculinity—the roles and patterns of behavior deemed appropriate for 
women and men—are constructed and defined.*® They define the norm. 

Power, Empowerment, and Agency 

Power in its different expressions has always been behind gender inequaUties. 
In fact, empowerment and agency are not only highly relevant to gender research 
but are essential to the questions we posed during the field work. Inasmuch as 
no social system exists without some divisions by gender, gender is co-substantial 
to the structure of power in all its forms (Caramazza and Vianello 2005): 

• Power over, or domination, the abdity to influence someone else’s actions and 
thus determine their interests and preferences (Lukes 1974) 

• Power to, or agency, people’s enduring capacity to act (Isaac 1987; Sen 1985) 

• Power with, or solidarity, and power within, or consciousness (Ibrahim and 
Alkire 2007; Rowlands 1997)** 

While we saw all these different forms in the research, our focus is on power as 
agency and, as such, as the capacity to act to achieve desired objectives. 

Our intent is to reveal men’s and women’s accounts of their gains in autonomy 
as gains in power, capacity, and potential to act, even when actions fail or are 
never taken. Power is not only the ability to make people do what they would 
not otherwise do but also the ability to enable people to do what they could not 
otherwise do (Hartsock 1996). It is this positive, creative notion of power that 
we aimed to capture in the focus groups, as well as what we stress in our analysis: 
a view of power as agency with individuals gaining the ability to act and decide. 

Before proceeding further, it is important to visit the related elements of 
empowerment, agency, and opportunity structure. Probably the term most asso¬ 
ciated with gender equality is empoiverment, the expansion of freedom of choice 
and action as a result of a process of gaining power (Narayan 2002; Narayan and 
Petesch 2005). It refers to the process of gaining control over resources—material 
and non-material—in order for individuals to gain the capacity to exercise the 
right to determine their own choices. Empowerment also refers to the way indi¬ 
viduals acquire the ability to influence change in their lives (Moser 1989), and 
are able to take advantage of opportunities. Empowerment’s departing point is a 
condition of disempowerment or the inability to exercise any influence. 

Hence, empowerment is contingent on agency as much as it is on available 
resources and opportunities. In other words, it is the expansion of agency 


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(Ibrahim and Alkire 2007; Kabeer 2001] or the expansion of people’s ability to 
make strategic life decisions in a context where this was previously denied 
to them. As with many other concepts, there is no single definition of empower¬ 
ment. Ibrahim and Alkire [2007] identified over 30 different definitions of 
empowerment in the literature and a number of approaches to measuring it 
empirically. 

With a development approach, agency as the expansion of an individual's oum 
power and freedom is strongly linked to the capabilities approach. According to 
Sen [2002], agency is part of a person’s development freedoms, where one is 
able to choose how to use entitlements in pursuit of self-determined goals. 
Agency, together with opportunities, is central to development. Alkire [2009] 
adds agency’s constructive role in the creation of values and norms to its intrinsic 
and instrumental relevance. And Nussbaum (1998, 1999], who looks more at 
legal frameworks and rights, specifically addresses the gender dimensions of 
agency. Nussbaum argues that women’s agency is different from men’s due to 
unequal social and political circumstances that give women unequal capabilities. 
For Kabeer (2001], agency is a dimension of empowerment, together with 
resources and achievements, without which the process of women’s empower¬ 
ment is not possible. Agency thus is the ability to make one’s own choices and 
act upon them. 

Whether agency is seen as the ability to formulate strategic life choices or the 
ability to control the resources that come to bear, its relation to empowerment 
and decision-making (as the capacity to act and bring about change] is clear. 
Benhabib et al. (1995] and Fraser (1997] include in their definitions of agency 
the subjective capacity for choice and also the capacity for self-determination, 
where women—and men—get to play an active role in the formation of their 
identity and do not passively absorb external determinations or constraints. 
As such, agency turns subjects into autonomous, purposive actors, capable of 
choice and self-definition, able (to attempt] to become the individual they have 
chosen to be through the actions that express it (Lister 1997]. 

Autonomy and agency are inter-related. As a necessary condition for any 
action, autonomy allows individuals to question the social norms, rules, and 
practices impacting their choices; to reflect upon these rules; and, if needed, to 
take action to change them (Doyal and Gough 1991; Dworkin 1988].^^ Self- 
efficacy, or people’s belief in their ability to mobilize available resources— 
human, material, or social—to make their choices a reality, is autonomy, which is 
an essential component of agency. 

Agency without access to resources is a somewhat passive capacity. As van 
Staveren (2013, 1] notes, “agency without resources is rather meaningless when 
being able to make one’s own choices and having the self-confidence to do so are 
not matched by any real opportunities to choose from (Alkire 2002; Robeyns 
2003].” Opportunity structures —by which we mean resources, institutions, estab- 
Ivihed processes (traditions, moral codes, gender norms), and other enabling fac'tors— 
foster the empowerment process and are necessary to create an enabling context 
for agency to manifest (Alsop, Bertelsen, and fdolland 2006; Narayan 2005]. 

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Formal and informal rules, state and local institutions, the market, and civil 
society are elements of the social structures within which choice takes place. As 
the context tor action, the structure ot opportunities tor gender equality is where 
agency can be realized [Kabeer 2001). 

Because of their characteristics, agency and empowerment are more difficult 
to measure than the structural factors that determine them. Research tends to 
focus on the opportunity structure or the prerequisites for agency (such as 
literacy, access to information, access to land, rights, etc., which are also opportu¬ 
nity structures), instead ot the components of agency itself (Alkire 2009). The 
problem is that these prerequisites do not always translate into agency nor are 
they the same for all individuals.’® Alsop (2005) argues for going beyond the 
mere existence of an opportunity, tor a research focus on the necessary conditions 
of agency:’^ 

• Existence of choice: whether an opportunity to make a choice exists 

• Use of choice: whether a person or group actually uses the opportunity to 
choose 

• Achievement of choice: whether the choice brings about the desired result 

World Development Report 2012 opts for exploring different manifestations of 
agency (or lack of it), where decision-making by women can be identified,’® 
similar to many of the studies surveyed by Kabeer (2001). 

In our study, we attempt to look at agency and gender inequality in agency. 
For men and women, agency differs: they have different degrees of empower¬ 
ment, different sets of choices, different opportunities, different capacities to 
exercise their choices, and different levels of achievement of chosen outcomes. 
This disparity in agency usually plays to women’s disadvantage. Hence, we want 
to understand “inequality of agency” and its central role in perpetuating gender 
inequality (Rao and Walton 2004). To do this, we tried to look at agency from 
three angles: the ability to act, self-efficacy or the belief that acting is possible, and the 
ability to control the resources to make a choice possible. 

Gender Inequality in Agency 

We designed the fieldwork methods to capture different manifestations of 
gender inequality in agency. First, we looked at decision-making processes in 
households as expressions of agency and autonomy in strategic life decisions, 
such as marriage, childbearing, education, and job choices. Second, we assessed 
the dynamics of changes in perceptions of power and freedom, as accounted by 
men and women in the 97 sample communities, and the many dimensions they 
identified. Third, we looked for the necessary conditions or factors determining 
the ability of women to feel empowered: education, aspirations, income, lack of 
threat of violence, and more. We do not try to cover everything, but attempt to 
show how interconnected agency and empowerment are with social norms 
around gender, the structure of opportunities, and the community contexts of 
the study participants. 


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In the same vein, the opportunities presented in the different communities are 
not equally distributed or open to both sexes. In fact, a community’s opportunity 
structure may include elements that reproduce gender inequality or women’s 
subordination, as noted by Sen and Grown (1987], Elson (1999], and Nussbaum 
(2000], For the purpose of our analysis, the structure of opportunities is com¬ 
prised of the formal and informal institutions, the market, and the household. For 
analytical purposes, social norms—normally part of the overall structure of 
opportunities—is treated separately to better acknowledge their role in promoting 
or restraining agency. 

The background conditions of society governing women and men vary. Not all 
societies are the same, nor are the economic, cultural, social, political, religious, 
security, and other conditions of the 20 countries visited in the study. Within 
each country, communities are highly heterogeneous. Focal conditions matter; 
they have an impact on women’s choices and preferences. Women and men 
constantly adapt their choices to what is happening around them. If the context 
does not provide fair conditions for action, this inequality is registered by house¬ 
holds and individuals, and shapes their preferences in ways that may be 
detrimental (particularly women]. 

These “adaptive preferences’’ have an impact on agency. What you do not see, 
you do not know and you cannot aspire to. For example, many of the women we 
interviewed reported a preference for flexible work arrangements, such as part- 
time work, informal sector or nonregulated work, and self-employment. It is 
worth asking, and we do so, if such preferences are shaped by women’s pre¬ 
scribed (gender] role as mothers and the opportunities available for working 
mothers provided by local markets. Some women have the perception that the 
employers prefer workers without care responsibilities; others do not have public 
provision of childcare in their communities. And stiU others do not have the 
qualifications to get a job. 

This is an example of the material and contextual preconditions to agency, in 
whose absence there is no real exercise of agency, merely a simulacrum of choice 
(Nussbaum 2006], This adaptation may lead to an inequality trap, where 
women’s muted preferences affect their capacity to aspire (Appadurai 2004]. 
In the long run, it reduces their agency because of a context that affects their 
ability to see the pathway to achieve their desired goals. 

Creating and Enforcing Gender through Norms, Roles, and Beliefs 

So how can we understand gender constructions of individuals and the strong 
hold of social norms on our behaviors and beliefs? Social norms are difficult to 
measure. If they appear as clear and concrete directives for actions, deriving from 
a given society’s values, they are easily captured in laws and formal rules. If they 
refer to informal, implicit rules that govern what a person can and cannot do in 
the pursuit of daily life, they are more elusive (Fehr and Gachter 2000; Hechter 
and Opp 2001; Fortes 2006]. Regardless of their form, compliance with the 
norms—-and sanctions for breaking them—are to be expected. 

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Norms around gender stem from a society’s ideals and values of what it means 
to be a woman or a man. Failure to conform to these dictates can trigger strong 
social sanctions, such as ridiculing men for being emotional or scorning women 
who dress inappropriately. These norms include everything from cultural beliefs 
to expected behaviors and practices. Gender norms, in particular, have not 
changed greatly partly because they are widely held and practiced in daily life, 
because they often represent the interests of power holders, and because they 
instill unconscious learned biases about gender differences that make it easier to 
conform to long-standing norms than to new ones.'® 

Social norms of gender are in constant dialogue with women’s agency and 
may determine women’s capacity to act. As such, they operate as social determi¬ 
nants that interact with an individual’s will in the form of a belief system around 
women and men. It is with this understanding that we observed social norms in 
the data collected in the 20 countries, as they appeared over and over again in 
women’s and men’s accounts of their daily lives in their communities. 


Norms and Roles 

For the purpose of this study, the main characteristics that define social norms 
are the following: (a) They regulate individual behavior in a society, (b) They 
specifically prescribe what behavior is expected and what is not allowed in spe¬ 
cific circumstances, (c) They tell a person what to believe others expect of her 
behavior and tell others what to expect from that person, (d) There is an 
expected agreement, or belief that the agreement exists, on the content of the 
norm and an enforcement of such agreement or belief by whoever holds power. 

Social norms are powerful forces; they are prescriptions or dictates reflected in 
the formal structures of society, in its informal rules; its gender role divisions; and 
permeating beliefs, attitudes, and behainors. They hold power via emotional control 
(Elster 1989], social expectations (Bicchieri 2006], and prescription [Akerlof and 
Kranton 2000], as well as internal commitment (Alexander 2003]. In many cases, 
particularly with gender norms, the joint presence of at least two of these forces 
makes the norm more binding. As Bicchieri (2006] suggests, individuals prefer to 
conform to the norm due to the belief that other people will also conform, 
to the point that a collective agreement is created between normative beliefs and 
behavior.^® How people believe they should behave, what their behavior is, 
and how society expects them to behave are all faces of the same system that 
enforces a norm. 

Although being a mother, a husband, or a student can be performed differ¬ 
ently by different people, specific behaviors are associated with each. We expect 
mothers to care for their children and students to attend school and take exams. 
These behavioral regularities are what make them social roles. 

Gender roles are part of these expected behaviors and, particularly, are 
sex-typed behaviors (Eagly, Beall, and Sternberg 2004]. Gender-ascribed roles 
define the ideal expected behaviors for men and women in any position they 
occupy in society or in any activity, overlapping with other expected role behav¬ 
ior. In other words, gender roles define what is deemed appropriate for women 


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and men, and define what attributes men and women should have and display 
in any situation. As such, gender roles are norms that women and men comply 
with all the time, whether in the household or on the street, in private or in 
public. They permeate daily life and are the basis of self-regulation, hence affect¬ 
ing individual agency. 

The constant presence of gender as a backdrop to all other roles makes gender 
roles unlike others. Gender has no specific site and it is not constrained to a 
physical space, such as a household. Gender is constructed in relation to the 
opposite sex’s attributes; as men and women are always present in society, so is 
gender. This is understood as “doing gender” (West and Zimmerman 1987; West 
and Fenstermaker 1995). Doing gender means being permanently accountable to 
what is expected that men and women will do—^basically replicating and repro¬ 
ducing the markers of what is considered the essential differences between 
the sexes. 

Reinforcing Norms 

If gender differences are translated into gender inequalities, the constant rein¬ 
forcement of these differences (when we “do gender”) may lead to accepting 
these inequalities as the norm. If women have more disadvantages with respect 
to men, they will reproduce them to the point that both women and men believe 
that such disadvantages are not only normal but how things should be. And even 
when women’s opportunities and resources change—women earn income, 
acquire assets, etc.—the belief may not change or may change more slowly 
(Ridgeway 1997). The beliefs that underpin these norms may even persist by 
adapting to new conditions. 

Part of the explanation for why these beliefs are so entrenched comes from 
learning what it is to be a girl or a boy, or a man or a woman, from very early in 
life.^' We learn the rules of the game and we then continuously reproduce them, 
almost as if we were following an “ethics” of gender behavior that controls our 
self-judging processes, as well as our awareness of judgment by others.^^ 

Supporting the acquisition of gender norms is a process of social punishments 
for transgressing the norms. While in some cases this policing takes the form of 
social sanctions, such as bullying, social ostracism, and even violence, there are 
also more subtle strategies operating over everyone. Parents and schoolteachers, 
for example, perceive future disadvantages and emphasize compensating behav¬ 
iors, such as teaching girls to find good husbands or boys to behave in a more 
masculine fashion. Adolescent girls rapidly learn the limits, such as intuiting 
norms about their newly developed bodies and experimenting with new ways to 
walk, sit, or dress. And adult women negotiate daily with different sanctions and 
expected behaviors. 

Social norms are enforced via different mechanisms, such as coercion, overt 
punishment, institutional methods of control (e.g., the police), the power of the 
media, and more covert expectations and rules transmitted in everyday interac¬ 
tions. Among the covert are two powerful concepts; the normal and the deviant. 
Deviant is any behavior that threatens expectations and norms of individual 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


behavior or that may challenge power. Ideas about what is normal and what is 
deviant are constructed by those who have the power to impose their views and 
have them accepted. 

Gender inequality has prevented women from participating in key domains of 
society that define and generate the rules and definition of what is normal. The 
notion of the normal has been monopolized by men. The overall societal norm 
is male; moreover, it is a particular sort of masculinity (“hegemonic” as Connell 
[1987] terms it)^^ that is regarded as normal. For example, in the labor market, 
the “ideal” employee is free from the time constraints of running a home and 
caring for children. The definition of a “normal” employee enables the reproduc¬ 
tion of gender inequality. Furthermore, this ideal is reproduced in labor codes, 
which established the 8-hour working day, the notion of a “family wage,” 
and more. 

Changing Norms 

But there are also challenges to the norms, and norms bend, relax, evolve, and 
change. The communities in our research show that what was improbable 
10 years ago is now possible—men help with housework and take care of chil¬ 
dren, women work for pay and manage their own money. Rather than “undoing 
gender” (as suggested by Butler [2004] and Deutsch [2007]), it seems that 
change has come through modifications in the normative frameworks associated 
with gender. The powerful grip of gender norms rests upon other social norms 
that organize society and help us live together. The collective ability to articulate 
alternative, oppositional norms is part of the agency of the individuals inhabiting 
society. 

Norms are negotiated and change through a variety of channels. Ridgeway 
and Correll (2004) suggest that exposure to counter-stereotypical images, 
such as a working mother or a female politician, and the delinking of negative 
associations with these images can change the status of expected behavior to 
the point that the gender norm varies or becomes irrelevant. Our analysis 
explores the appearance of conflicting norms, for example, that arise from 
different role demands, social and technological changes that affect the 
cost-benefit balance of enforcing the norm, and willingness of media or infor¬ 
mation outlets (Chong, Duryea, and La Ferrara 2008; Jensen and Oster 2009) 
to show that other normative arrangements are possible—which are all means 
of negotiating norms. 

Change can happen when the normative frameworks become less strict, 
allowing gender differences to be less of a determinant. For example, when 
governments revise legislation on inheritance rights to allow daughters and sons 
alike to inherit their parents’ property, it not only weakens the social norm that 
says that male heirs should be given preference but also introduces variability in 
inheritance practices. Such legislation changes the ownership of assets in society, 
questions marital practices based on men being the sole land proprietors, 
includes women in productive decisions over land and property, and goes 
further. 


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Our analysis clearly shows how normative frameworks around gender are 
changing—albeit slowly—and opening space tor new practices and producing 
more opportunities tor women and men. However, this change is being contested: 
backlashes are common and the change is uneven. Movement in one area does 
not always mean movement in other areas or for everyone. 


Overview of Chapters 

How do agency and norms work together to increase women’s and men’s ability 
to change their lives? What do women and men need to realize the power and 
treedom to make choices—even when facing material or normative constraints— 
in their communities? Agency is as much about choice and the power to act as 
it is about voice. And the decisions that women and men make, their ability to 
act, and their voices are dependent on both the opportunities and constraints 
typifying the societies they live in. 

Women’s preferences are not independent of the social and material environ¬ 
ment they inhabit; they are contingent on it, as economists increasingly recognize 
(Fehr and Hofl 2011). The sample communities in our research showcase differ¬ 
ent enabling environments in which women make choices, such as different 
market dynamics and different normative prescriptions on women’s actions. For 
example, to some women in rural and isolated communities or other restricted 
environments, access to a road is highly strategic and liberating. For other women 
in a large city with public transportation, a new road may simply be practical and 
reduce the time or cost of their commute. For both sets of women, however, the 
road is a route to (gain) power. 

But sometimes a road is not enough. Social norms are major factors affecting 
women’s agency (see box 1.2 for a glossary of key study terms). Their strength 
and ability to permeate all areas of individual action make them determinants 
of the context in which agency can be exercised. Due to the presence of norms, 
agency is not evenly distributed across spheres of life. The same road that can 
increase women’s opportunities to engage in labor and retail markets—through 


Box 1.2 Quick Glossary 

- Agency is the ability to make meaningful choices and act upon them. 

- Structure of opportunities means the resources, institutions, established practices 
(traditions, moral codes, gender norms), and other enabling factors that foster the 
empowerment process and are necessary for agency to manifest (Alsop, Bertelsen, and 
Holland 2006; Narayan 2005). 

- Social norms, the gender-ascribed formal structures, informal rules, gender role divisions, 
and permeating beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, are treated as a separate element, although 
they are a part of the structure of opportunities. 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


which they can increase their agency—does not always translate directly into a 
greater voice inside their homes. Variations in agency depend on the strength ol 
the norms and roles that regulate each sphere. 

Conversely even with existing normative frameworks, women are seeing their 
power surge. They told us in the focus groups that they see themselves gaining 
power and freedom, more so than the men. And women’s gains in economic 
empowerment are underpinned by more active participation in society, both of 
which are driving their empowerment. 

This report is structured in three sections. Part 1 focuses on gender norms and 
the dynamics of negotiation, acceptance, and resistance around them. Chapter 1 
sets the stage by synthesizing the range of views on gender roles found in the 
20 countries. By focusing on gender ideals—the good wife and the good husband, 
the good girl and the good boy—the chapter reveals how little variation exists 
around the world in expected behavior by the sexes. Looking at different genera¬ 
tions, however, shows that the slow change that is occurring is due more to 
relaxation of norms than radical upheaval. 

Continuing with prevailing norms, chapter 2 presents different ways in which 
norms are negotiated and resisted. First, it looks at non-conflictive and negotiated 
practices, including incipient change to what is deemed possible or tolerable for 
masculine and feminine behavior. Then, the chapter moves to accepted practices 
for disciplining behaviors that do not conform to these norms, including domestic 
violence. 

Part II probes how norms interact with agency in strategic hfe choices. 
Chapter 3 covers the effects of gender differences in making life-defining deci¬ 
sions that shape young women’s and men’s futures, such as why adolescent boys 
or girls decide to leave school and how they choose their first job. It also looks at 
decisions on family formation against a backdrop of reported expectations and 
actual practices. The discussion includes the local norms that impinge on each 
decision, as well as the sense of agency and power to make those decisions in the 
words of the focus group participants. 

Moving more directly into the dynamics of empowerment, part III exam¬ 
ines the factors that individuals identify as primarily increasing their power 
and freedom, as well as the opportunity structures associated with them. 
Chapter 4 considers the dynamics of empowerment and agency, the dynamics 
of individual gains in power, and the explanations behind them. It presents 
evidence that women see gains in their capacities to shape their lives, while 
men report that they are stagnating or sliding backwards. Chapter 5 looks at 
the community conditions associated with power loss or gain, particularly 
markets, formal institutions of representation, family conflict resolution, and 
legal regulations. The chapter especially considers how market dynamics 
interact with changing gender norms to shape women’s perceptions of 
empowerment. 

The concluding remarks summarize the main findings and outline future areas 
for research and policy action. 


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Notes 

1. The countries included in our study are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, the 
Dominican Republic, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Moldova, Papua New Guinea, 
Peru, Poland, Serbia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Vietnam, West Bank and 
Gaza, and the Republic of Yemen. 

2. See World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development (World Bank 
2012} for more detad and data on these trends. 

3. Alkire (2002) makes similar arguments, but from a perspective of gaps in human 
development rather than lack of rights, and calls attention to the need to assess well¬ 
being at the individual and wider collective or societal levels, as well as the capabilities 
and assets needed for exercising agency. 

4. Kabeer (2001), Ibrahim and Alkire (2007), and Samman and Santos (2009) provide 
surveys of the different studies and perspectives under which they were conducted. 

5. The methodological note in the appendix includes more details on the data collection 
tools, as well as on the analysis techniques used. 

6. At the end of the data collection effort, the team had gathered about 7,000 pages of 
narrative text of transcripts of focus groups and interviews. These data were structured, 
cleaned, and imported into qualitative analysis software. 

7. Based on the World Bank’s classification of regions, which includes Latin America and 
the Caribbean, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Europe 
and Central Asia, and East Asia and Pacific. 

8. All research team members participating in each discussion were the same sex as the 
focus group participants. 

9. Arendt’s (1979) work on the origins of totalitarianism attributes this change to the 
appearance of the social sphere, where nothing is private or an object of political 
debate. 

10. Eor example, gender differences in participation in the labor force may derive from a 
history of specialization due to our biological differences. As Alesina et al. (2010) and 
Alesina, Giuliano, and Nunn (2011) argue, based on the evolution of labor-intensive 
agriculture (before mechanization) that required physical strength, which is more 
common in men than women, women specialized in home production due to their 
lack of physical strength. 

11. Robeyns (2003) also presents a detailed account of all the different approaches to 
power that have been used in development practice. 

12. As defined by Amartya Sen. Eor an application of the approach to gender inequality, 
see Robeyns (2003) and Nussbaum (2001). 

13. A person’s agency freedom, for Sen, should be understood as including the indi¬ 
vidual’s aims, objectives, allegiances, obligations, and—in a broad sense—the person’s 
concept of the good. Also see Sen (1985). 

14. Samman and Santos (2009) provide a good survey and summary of these two 
different positions. 

15. Doyal and Gough (1991, 53) define autonomy as “the ability to make informed 
choices about what should be done and how to go about doing it. This entails being 
able to formulate aims and beliefs about how to achieve them, along with the ability 
to evaluate the success of those beliefs in the light of empirical evidence.” 


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The Norms of Power and the Power of Norms 


16. See also Ibrahim and Alkire (2007) and Kabeer (1999, 2001), who refer to studies 
that use measures of access to land as an indicator of empowerment. They argue that 
these types of studies, by focusing only on land ownership or legal capacity to own, 
forget the pathways by which such access translates into agency and achievements in 
women’s lives. 

17. How these three conditions are measured, however, is not clear. 

18. The World Development Report 2012 identifies freedom of movement, fertility control, 
freedom from domestic violence, and the ability to have a voice in society as the main 
components of agency. Ibrahim and Alkire (2007) propose certain “exercises of 
agency” areas with specific sets of indicators, including control over personal decisions, 
choice in household decision making, domain-specific autonomy, power to change 
aspects in one’s life at the individual level, and power to change aspects in one’s life 
at the community level. 

19. See World Development Report 2012 (World Bank 2012, 174, box 4.7) for an explana¬ 
tion of processes that make social norms very difficult to dislodge, even when the 
conditions that gave rise to them no longer make objective sense. 

20. Bicchieri (2006) defines the expectations that underlie norm compliance as 1) 
empirical expectations, where individuals believe that a sufficiently large subset of the 
relevant group or population conforms to the norm in a given situation; 2) normative 
expectations, where individuals believe that a sufficiently large subset of the relevant 
group or population expects them to conform to the norm in a given situation; and 
(3) normative expectations with sanctions, where individuals believe that a sufficiently 
large subset of the relevant group or population expects them to conform to the norm 
in a given situation, prefers them to conform, and may sanction behavior. 

21. Socialization is the process by which prevailing social and cultural norms of what 
constitutes appropriate gender behavior is transmitted to children. 

22. Following the categories created by Garfinkel (1967), West and Zimmerman (1987) 
call this process “accountability” of our gender practice. Our everyday behavior, 
according to Garfinkel, is “accountable” in the sense that it is intelligible and legiti¬ 
mate, and observed as fitting a specific pattern so it doesn’t need to be explained to 
anyone in order to be identified and accepted. 

23. Connell (1987) uses the term hegemonic masculinity to describe ways that some 
forms of masculinity are more culturally exalted and socially dominant than others. 
“Hegemonic masculinity is constructed in relation to women and to subordinated 
masculinities. The other masculinities need not be as clearly defined—indeed, achiev¬ 
ing hegemony may consist precisely in preventing alternatives gaining cultural defini¬ 
tion and recognition as alternatives, confining them to ghettos, to privacy, to 
unconsciousness” (Connell 1987, 186). Connell also talks of “emphasized femininity” 
to describe patterns of femininity that have more cultural and ideological support 
than others. None can be hegemonic in a social context where women are in an 
overall subordinate position in relation to men—where women are not in the posi¬ 
tions of power that enable a definition of femininity in a way that serves women’s 
interests. 


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PART I 


Gender Norms 


One of Sisum’s most unforgettable childhood memories was an angry outburst 
by her father when she asked why men and boys always dined first in Samtse, 
her small village in southern Bhutan.’ Sometimes this meant that Sisum had to 
wait to eat until late in the afternoon if her father had business in neighboring 
towns. “I am not so used to this,” she recounted of her hunger and frustration 
with the delays, “because in my uncle’s house [in the city] such practices are not 
followed. They are all educated and they feel it is not right.” Sisum lives with her 
uncle’s family in Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital, during the months she is in school. 
She is also “sad for mother, who is always working so hard in the house and she 
does not even get to eat a meal together with the rest of the family.” 

This eventful day, Sisum found the courage to ask her mother about the meal¬ 
time tradition, but her mother only explained that it “has been followed since our 
ancestors’ time.” Searching for a reason that made more sense to her, Sisum then 
sought out her father for an explanation. Her father, however, responded by 
completely losing his temper over her question, directing his rage at her mother: 

Before our marriage, you were nothing. Your family members were poor and we 
always had to support them. I am fed up with your family members and this is the 
third time that you have gone against the culture and tradition that we follow in 
this house. It is you who have instigated Sisum to question these things. How does 
a girl of her age learn how to talk like this? ... In this house, you all are supposed to 
do what I say. I am the head of the family. Without me, you would not have proper 
shelter or even meals to eat. How dare you complain and question why women 
have to eat after men. It is up to us whether we want you to eat after men or not 
eat at all. 

Sisum’s brother had to step in during their father’s furious eruption to prevent 
her mother from being beaten in front of the family and servants. 


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27 



28 


Gender Norms 


Sisum, now age 26, comes from a wealthy family, but Samtse’s 500 or so 
residents are mostly illiterate and poor. Her education and exposure to new norms 
in rapidly urbanizing Thimphu have clashed with her father’s expectation of keep¬ 
ing traditional village practices. In one world, Sisum was raised to conform to strict 
gender codes of subordination and respect for her father’s authority; yet, simulta¬ 
neously in the city, her other world, she was exposed to changing expectations 
about the proper roles and conduct for a girl and her father. Sisum will shortly 
complete her engineering degree and is determined to find a way to help change 
the traditions in her village. She knows about organizations that work on women’s 
and children’s rights in Thimphu, but they have yet to reach places like Samtse. 

In some respects, Sisum’s life straddles the 97 communities in our dataset. 
Overall, the communities in our study closely adhere to norms prescribing what 
women and men are expected to do, particularly when it comes to the division 
of domestic and breadwinner roles in the household. And these productive and 
reproductive gender role differences are mirrored and replicated at the wider 
community level. Change is happening, but at a very slow pace. The data show 
incremental and uneven changes in gender roles and norms, and a diversity 
of forces driving these transitions. On one hand, norms are being modified by 
negotiation and adaptation by men and women in response to new, emerging 
views on gender equality (box PI. 1]. Wider forces are also driving change, includ¬ 
ing new legislation, education achievement, communications technology, and 
many others. On the other hand, change is resisted in both discourses and 
practices. As discussed in chapter 2, domestic violence, in many cases seen as a 
man’s right over his wife, occurs as a reaction to challenges to the norm; but 
widely held behefs and everyday practices like dinner rules also change. 

If young Sisum is confused by certain traditions in her family or how she 
ought to behave with her father, she is not alone. Sometimes uncertainty can be 
an advantage for flouting traditions that no longer make sense. And sometimes 
uncertainty about acceptable conduct creates space for disagreement and violent 
enforcement of the norm. 

Ridgeway and Correll (2004] note that beliefs in gender stereotypes are 
so resilient that descriptive attributes of the “typical” man or woman have 
remained stable since the 1970s.^ Chapter 1 reveals a similar finding: the focus 
groups’ reports of the traits associated with the ideal “good wives,” “good husbands,” 
“good girls,” and “good boys” are remarkably constant across countries and loca¬ 
tions, and have remained largely unchanged, compared to previous generations. 
However, as shown throughout this report (particularly chapter 2], in everyday 
practices, there is more margin for negotiation, despite adherence to the ideal, 
and change is inescapable as more women participate in labor markets and more 
husbands help out at home. 

By definition, social norms are accompanied by surveillance and sanctioning 
practices to ensure compliance, ranging from community pressure for expected 
behaviors to explicit enforcement by violence. Women’s and men’s constant 
accountability to conform to norms has implications for their agency and ability 
to take action. 


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Gender Norms 


29 


Box PI.1 What Is Gender Equality? Views from the Ground 

When we asked the adult focus groups about the desirability of gender equality, their views 
differed strongly (figure BPI.1.1). Below is a flavor of the perceptions, ranging from the large 
majority who were favorably disposed to the notion of gender equality to those with decid¬ 
edly mixed views. 

Mutual respect, understanding, consultation, harmony, freedom, less stress and 
violence 

- "Equality between men and women means that they have a happy relationship and are 
comfortable talking to each other about their problems." (Adult man, Labasa, Fiji) 

- "They should be able to do whatever they really want to do." (Adult woman, Hyderabad, 
Andhra Pradesh, India) 

Sharing of work and household responsibilities 

- "Equality for me means that all of us should work and should enjoy the fruit of our work. 
I should not work alone while the man is just sitting there." (Adult woman, urban Nsenene 
village, Tanzania) 

- "Happiness and equality are related. If the husband understands that happiness is 
supporting and helping his wife in housework and in taking care of children, the happiness 
of the family will be reinforced." (Adult man, Ba Dinh District, Hanoi, Vietnam) 

- "Before a woman had no opportunity to work, and now she does. If a woman cooks, the man 
should wash and change a child's diapers." (Adult woman, Santiago de los Caballeros, 
the Dominican Republic) 


Figure BPI.1.1 Equality between a Woman and a Man? 


Rural women 


Urban women 


Urban men 



Rural men 



20 40 60 

Frequency of mentions 

Unfavorable view ■ Mixed view ■ Favorable view 


100 


Note: Data from 194 adult focus groups. 


box continues next page 


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30 


Gender Norms 


Box PI.1 What Is Gender Equality? Views from the Ground (continued) 

Equal rights and nondiscrimination 

- "Equality between a man and a woman means there should not be gender discrimination 
and there should be equal opportunities for both." (Urban woman Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, 
India) 

About half of the rural men either qualified or flatly rejected gender equality as a goal for 
their society (see figure BPI.1.1). In the village of Levuka, Fiji, a man insisted, "There cannot be 
any equality between a man and a woman because men make all the decisions." A village man 
from Malangachilima, Tanzania, declared, "I do not think it means a lot to me. [Women] go to 
the office or into politics, but look at how our families are dying. They [women] do everything, 
but do you see the immoralities around? ... That is equality. It is a disaster." 

In the interviews in the Roma community in Serbia, the defense of highly unequal gender 
relations and the institutions that support these relations was very strong. The young Roma 
men did not appear to be open to questioning their privileges or to seeing any value in 
more equal relations: "A wife does not matter the least bit in making decisions, it is my 
good will"; "who even asks a woman about anything"; and "it all depends on what the 
husband wants. If he wants to get rid of his wife and children, it will be as he wishes. If he 
wants to get rid of her, but keep the children, it will again be as he wishes." A mixture of 
dominant cultural views about gender roles and the need to protect a permanently 
threatened culture seem to lurk behind these voices. 

In the Muslim communities sampled, women and men sometimes quoted religious scrip¬ 
ture and defined equality in relation to "rights and duties": men and women have responsibili¬ 
ties that accord with the gender-ascribed roles of male breadwinners and female caretakers. In 
rural Shirabad Ulya, Afghanistan, the men disagreed with "the present policy of the govern¬ 
ment and other non-Muslim people [that] women [of Afghanistan] should be free like the 
women of Europe or America. But we don't like this equality and it is not good." 


The evidence from the research data strongly suggests that when households 
and communities find ways to relax and change inequitable gender norms, men’s 
and women’s individual and collective agency increase and reinforce one 
another. The analysis indicates that the interplay between more equitable gender 
norms and more widely shared voice and power is often accompanied by more 
inclusive and effective local-level institutions, which are embedded in and repro¬ 
duce existing normative frameworks. In particular, greater gender equality in 
communities makes it more likely that claims by weaker groups will be heard, 
deemed legitimate, and addressed—even a small, inconsequential question by a 
young girl who is hungry. Recognition is the first step of the process.^ 

Notes 

1. Pseudonyms are used in place of particular individuals or communities named in this 
study. In some cases, community names have been replaced with references to districts 
or municipalities. 


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Gender Norms 


31 


2. Ridgeway and Correll (2004, 526-28) also cite a set of studies that looks empirically 
at the resilience of gender beliefs: Fiske et al. 2002; Lueptow, Garovich-Szabo, and 
Lueptow 2001; and Spence and Buckner 2000. 

3. This is in line with Wall’s (2012) emphasis on the need for societies to strengthen 
their capacities to recognize and address children’s needs and interests in the context 
of advancing deeper and more effective democratization processes. 


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Lueptow, L. B., L. Garovich-Szabo, and M. B. Lueptow. 2001. "Social Change and the 
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Ridgeway, C. L., and S. J. Correll. 2004. “Unpacking the Gender System: A TTieoretical 
Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations.” Gender and Society 18 (4): 
510-31. 

Spence, J. T, and C. E. Buckner. 2000. "Instrumental and Expressive Traits, Trait 
Stereotypes, and Sexist Attitudes: What Do They Signify?” Psychology of Womtm 
Quarterly 24: 44-62. 

Wall, J. 2012. “Can Democracy Represent Children? Toward a Politics of Difference.” 
Childhood 19 (1): 86-100. 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


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CHAPTER 1 


The Rules We Live By: Gender Norms 
and Ideal Images 


Drawing on the nearly 4,000 voices of the people who participated in the 
qualitative assessment, chapter 1 explores the prevalent gender norms surround¬ 
ing women’s and men’s lives in the communities where the focus groups were 
held. * As key components of a society’s culture, norms and roles allow people to 
organize their lives in consistent, predictable ways. But sometimes normative role 
behavior becomes rigidly defined and curtails freedom of action and agency. 

To capture the ideal views of gender roles in a household, we look first at how 
the focus group participants defined a “good wife’’ and a “good husband’’ in their 
communities. Masculinity and femininity are more than sex-appropriate behav¬ 
iors. They are also defined by a power relationship, and it is in the domestic 
sphere where subordination and domination are more clearly revealed. Chapter 1 
shows how little the core practices that define the identities of wives and 
husbands have changed.^ 

The focus groups of adolescents (conducted in nine countries) held conversa¬ 
tions about what traits characterized a “good girl” and a “good boy,” and a “bad 
boy” or “bad girl.” Like the adults, the adolescents’ views on what makes the girls 
good and turns them into good wives, and what makes the boys good so they 
become good husbands, were very consistent across countries and communities. 
Chapter 1 shows how their views on the behaviors expected of both sexes in a 
household context are translated into and reinforced by community-level 
(collective) expectations of individual behavior as much as by collective behav¬ 
iors (as Bicchieri [2006] notes). 

Normative Frameworks for Household Gender Inequalities 

Gender norms and roles are reproduced in the private and public spheres and all 
other areas of life. Understanding how this framework operates at the household 
level is important because it provides a sort of mental map of the acceptable 
roles, responsibilities, and behaviors for each household member. The codes 
that govern men’s and women’s relations in the household are strict and 


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33 


34 


The Rules We Live By: Gender Norms and Ideal Images 


Frankly speaking, women here are very miserable. They suffer from a lot of 
pressures. Pigs scream, kids cry, and husbands ask for sex. 

—Village man, Hung Yeng District, Vietnam 


gender-specific. They have varied a little, but when changes have occurred, they 
have not always remained stable over time. 

How much is the traditional intrahousehold normative framework changing 
today? Are norms relaxing and changing as gender equality increases around the 
world? To answer these questions, all the adult focus groups explored stereo¬ 
typed notions of a good wile and good husband. The depictions below of a good 
wife and good husband reflect the participants’ most idealized views of gender 
roles and norms. They do not necessarily reflect the composition of their house¬ 
holds, the realities of their daily lives, or their aspirations for their lives 
(see box PI.l]. They do, however, describe the normative framework that binds 
both women and men. 

We find that the normative frameworks governing the roles within the 
household have remained largely unchanged. Consistently across both men’s 
and women’s focus groups, and across the urban and rural contexts, and across 
different economic, political, and social circumstances of the 20 countries, men 
and women hold similar views of the wife’s and husband’s roles. Strict gender 
norms may be relaxing some, but they still retain a tight grip over women’s and 
men’s idealized roles and behaviors as husbands and wives. Almost every partici¬ 
pant described a good husband as the highest household authority and respon¬ 
sible for being a benevolent decision-maker and a good provider for the 
household. The focus group accounts of a good wife depicted her first and 
foremost as an obedient, caring, and respectful mate to the good husband. She 
is responsible for all the housework and the care of all members of the house¬ 
hold, and is held strictly accountable for her domestic responsibilities day in and 
day out. 

The wife’s and husband’s roles are quite stable across the focus groups, but we 
also see signs of flexibility around these norms. In some places, the norms are 
relaxing, and some of the factors that are driving this relaxation seem to be asso¬ 
ciated with increased education levels, women’s participation in the labor force, 
and urbanization. But we cannot affirm that there is a direct relationship with 
these drivers. Men, however, appear to have more leniency within their pre¬ 
scribed norms. In the aggregate, urban communities are ahead of rural 
communities in norm relaxation and negotiation. 

Figure 1.1 lists the four most-mentioned topics in the focus group discussions 
of a good wife and good husband. The frequencies in the figure show the number 
of times a topic was brought up in the 194 adult focus group discussions. The 
figure does not specifically assess favorable or unfavorable perceptions associated 
with these attributes.^ 


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Figure 1.1 Characteristics of a Good Wife and a Good Husband 



Frequency of mentions 
■ Good wife ■ Good husband 
Note: Data from 194 adult focus groups (men and women). 


As observed in figure 1.1, domestic responsibilities receive, by quite a remark¬ 
able amount, the greatest emphasis in discussions about the definition of a good 
wife. Opinions of this overriding role for women outnumber all other descrip¬ 
tions, whether we asked urban men and women or rural men and women. For a 
good husband, his economic role is mentioned the most, but in comparison with 
the domestic role of the good wife, this received less stress. 

The Good Wife 

The strong emphasis on women’s domestic work and care is all the more striking 
because focus groups were specifically prompted about the income-earning roles 
of both the good wife and the good husband, and how they each balance work 
and family life. Domestic responsibilities are clearly the dominant tasks assigned 
to women. 

Domestic responsibilities for women cover a broad range of activities, mostly 
associated with home care. In a village in the Sumadija District, Serbia, a 
woman described a good wife as a “housewife, obedient, loyal, good mother, 
good cook, cleans the house.” To a women’s focus group in Nellore (Andhra 
Pradesh], India, a good wife “looks after the family well, gives all her time to the 
family, and understands the family problems.” Similarly, in Hato Mayor, 
the Dominican Republic, men portrayed a good wife as “the one who cares 
for the house, the children, and the husband.” And in a semi-rural community 
of the Ngonyameni area outside Durban, South Africa, men said a good wife 
“makes sure that everything runs smoothly in her household, she takes care of 
her husband and children.” Indeed, almost every focus group elaborated on a 
good wife’s paramount role of caring for her family. 

Focus groups also attached the highest ethical attitudes and behaviors to a 
good wife [see table 1.1). Women from urban National Capital District, 
Papua New Guinea, imagined her to be “honest, friendly, smart, sharing, 


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The Rules We Live By: Gender Norms and Ideal Images 


A good wife stays home, takes care of the house and children, cooks, feeds 
livestock. The important thing is that the woman should do this by goodunll. 

—Village men’s group, Floresti District, Moldova 

[A good wife] looks after the children, does all housework, keeps her husband 
happy by doing everything, contributes to household income somehow, and 
thinks about husband and children first. 

—Village woman, Naitasiri Province, Fiji 

If the husband is not good, the impact on the family is lighter because the 
mother is the foundation of the family. If she is not good, it affects the family 
more. 

—Village woman, Dirbas, West Bank and Gaza 


Table 1.1 Characteristics of a Good Wife and Good Husband Described by Adult Men and Women in Ba Dinh 
District, Vietnam 


A good wife 



A good husband 


Women 

Men 

Women 


Men 


Takes good care 
of her house 
Takes good care 
of her family and 
children 

Cares for kinship/ 
relatives 
Contributes to 
the family income 
(not necessary) 



Is faithful 
Educates 
children well 
Takes good 
care of the 
family 

Is a good cook 
Earns money 
Has social 
status 


Is responsible 
for family, 
kinship, and 
society 

Contributes to 
family income 
Should 
be a good 
breadwinner 
Takes care of 
his children 



• Is faithful 

• Is a good earner 

• Has sympathy and 
helps wife and 
children 

• Has social status 

• Is hardworking 

• Does not drink or 
gamble heavily 

• Does not come 
home late 

• Is not adulterous; 
does not associate 
with sex workers 


caring, helpful, submissive, loving, understanding, faithful, [have] the heart of 
a servant, hardworking, respectful, responsible, and wise [with budgeting].” 
Many focus groups stressed that a good wife respects her husband and is 
faithful, supportive, and submissive. In Peru, wives must have a “good 
character, love their husband, help their husband, and be a homemaker.” In 
Levuka, Fiji, a good wife is “a good listener and obedient to the husband ... 
[and] a good advisor.” In Rafah, West Bank and Gaza, a good wife is “obedient, 
polite, behaves well.” 

In most contexts in the communities sampled, women who have children 
and husbands who provide well for the family generally do not work. 


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In Bhubaneswar (Odisha), India, the women said that a good wife does not 
have to take a job, but “men whose wives contribute are happy because they 
feel a little relieved from their economic responsibility.” Urban men were 
generally more likely than rural men to voice appreciation for wives who earn 
income and contribute to a household’s prosperity and happiness. Nevertheless, 
the overall picture from the focus groups of a good wife’s economic role is 
quite mixed. Simple urban and rural differences in whether women work for 
pay or do not work cannot capture the complex realities of women’s lives. 
Often their quite-active economic participation may go unrecognized or even 
be hidden because of the status their communities attach to being “just a 
housewife.” 

Still, in many communities, a good wife may mean she earns income. The 
urban focus groups, more often than rural groups, mentioned the economic 
participation of good wives. (Chapter 5 looks specifically at working mothers 
and women’s economic participation.) Their discourse about working women, 
however, may just be glib, reinforcing expectations that women’s traditional 
domestic role remains the more important one. This synthesis of a good wife 
from men in a neighborhood of Hoang Mai District in Hanoi, Vietnam, is 
typical: 

A good wife should make her husband proud of her. A good wife is not necessarily 
a high income earner, but she has to have a stable and decent work. She has to be a 
good daughter in-law. Most important, she must be a good mother who knows how 
to raise her children to be healthy and smart. 

In a similar vein, the men’s group in Nsenene village, Tanzania, highlighted how 
their town’s expectations of an urban good wife have become more relaxed and 
now include a provider role and activities beyond the household —in addition to 
traditional care duties: 

She does all the cleaning. She prepares breakfast. She works on the plantation in the 
morning. She prepares lunch. She goes to work on the plantation in the afternoon. 
She attends association meetings in the late afternoon. She comes back to make 
sure supper is ready. She serves supper. She goes to bed and should have sex with 
her husband. 

Despite the economic role of the urban good wife, her principal priorities remain 
domestic and her authority is clearly subordinate to her husband’s. A good wife 
today, noted by men in Balti, Moldova, is likely to work for pay; she “may con¬ 
tribute to the family budget, but if the husband is a good provider, then she 
should not. Her role is to create appropriate conditions for her husband to earn 
money.” In urban Mongar District, Bhutan, a good wife “stays home, looks after 
the children, listens to her husband, and does not roam around. ... During her 
free time, she works to earn extra income for the family. [She can] weave, raise 
vegetables or poultry.” An urban good wife’s provider role is also second to her 
reproductive roles. She will likely not work (earn income) if she has many 
children or her children are very young. 

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When we compare our urban and rural communities, we find that rural 
settings more often stick close to the traditional prescribed norms. Particularly 
with the productive role, we see some dissent among focus group participants. 
In rural Afghanistan and the Republic of Yemen, for instance, where it is not 
customary for women to work for pay, the women declared that income is not 
our responsibility.” In a semi-rural community of Ngonyameni, South Africa, the 
women indicated that good wives can work, but there was disagreement in the 
men’s group. One man from this community suggested that a working woman 
can even contribute more income than her spouse, while another insisted that 
“good wives do not work; they stay at home and care for the children.” Many 
rural women work on family plots and tend their own gardens and small live¬ 
stock, but these farm or household activities are often perceived as extensions of 
their household roles. However, focus groups noted that a good wife earning 
outside income also announces that the household is experiencing undesirable 
circumstances. For instance, poor widows may have little choice but to seek jobs 
outside their households that provide some cash income (see box 1.1). 

When asked how a good wife balances her many responsibilities, from work 
to family life, a common response from both urban and rural groups was that a 


Box 1.1 Nontraditional Households 

Focus groups most often discussed good wives and good husbands in relation to a monoga¬ 
mous couple in a nuclear family. On the rare occasions when they mentioned other types of 
households, women living in such arrangements were often portrayed as more vulnerable 
and powerless than when attached to a mate. If a woman in a village in (Odisha) India sepa¬ 
rated from her partner, she had to forfeit custody of her children; she could not expect alimony 
or a share of household property; she would "feel helpless even in her parents' home"; and she 
might be forced to remarry an elderly man. In communities in the sample where polygamy is 
practiced, monogamy was named by both women and men as a quality of a good husband. 
Sharing husbands and resources with multiple wives or living with in-laws, parents, or other 
relatives can be disempowering for women. In Tangerang, Indonesia, a 38-year-old widow 
lamented, "At present I live with my kids and parents, and still rent a house. I used to be happy 
because I had a husband." Sudanese focus groups talked about the great stigma and gossip 
that widows face because villagers assume they are "having relations with men." 

In a few communities, family laws are making separations somewhat easier for women and 
men. A single woman, whether a mother or not, may in some contexts enjoy greater freedom 
of action, status, and control of assets than a married woman. A women's focus group in Liberia 
explained that better-off widows can get on with their lives, "but if the deceased husband was 
poor and her kids are still young, then she would suffer a lot unless relatives stand beside her." 
Similarly, in rural Papua New Guinea, better-off widows are the only women who can own land 
in the village. And in Afghanistan, focus groups explained that elderly widows enjoy a lot of 
independence and can travel in public because they are too old to shame family honor and are 
perceived to be the "mothers of society." 


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good wife can do everything skillfully and with ease. Whether she works for pay 
or not seems to be secondary to household obligations. In rural Velugodu 
(Andhra Pradesh), India, a good wife, according to the women’s group, “always 
chooses to work from home.” In Olsztyn, a large city in Poland where women 
have been out in the workforce for decades, a good wife “copes perfectly with 
her obligations.” However, another woman retorted, “She lives 26 hours a day.” In 
urban Bukoba, Tanzania, the men’s attributes of a good wife included that “she 
must do business as well,” but when asked how a good wife finds time for all this, 
one of them offered, “I think that, if she is employed, it is her fault. Let her do 
all her work also.” 

Discussion groups also compared today’s and the previous generation’s good 
wife. Many recalled that, in their mother’s time, a good wife was more submis¬ 
sive, patient, quiet, and tolerant of being ill-treated. And a good wife in the past 
typically did not earn income, which was often viewed as undesirable. In rural 
Chiclayo, Peru, men said that a good wife in the previous generation was “dedi¬ 
cated to the home ... scared of her husband, and hard working.” Women in 
Umlazi township A (near Durban), South Africa, maintained that a good wife 
“would have stayed in the marriage even if the husband was beating her.” In 
Olsztyn, Poland, one women’s group did not mention problems of violence, but 
they felt that a good wife of their mother’s generation was treated like a servant 
or “kind of slave.” 

In a semi-rural community of Ngonyameni, South Africa, men voiced 
nostalgia for earlier times when wives were more obedient: “They respected their 
husbands. They did not argue with them. What is happening today is just a 
shame.” Similarly, a woman from University Quarter, West Bank and Gaza, 
recalled, “[The good wife from my mother’s generation] used to remain quiet 
and not argue with the man.” 

Most focus groups of both sexes concurred that today’s good wives are less 
obedient, less respectful, and less patient, and more likely to talk back and argue 
with their husbands. While there are exceptions, most women viewed these 
changes in a good wife—and in gender relations generally—favorably and 
described their families as now closer and friendlier. According to a village 
woman in Velugodu (Andhra Pradesh), India, “a good wife then was more 
accommodating and patient, and today’s good wife is smart and ambitious.” 

This perception of change is crucial. For women to become empowered in the 
domestic sphere, they must use their agency to negotiate the nature of gender 
relations in the household, which in turn may influence the decisions made 
within it. Women’s public roles may have changed in recent decades, but the 
limited changes in gender relations within the private sphere allow unequal 
gender relations to persist."* 

The Good Husband 

Set against the many ideal qualities of a good wife, focus groups depicted a good 
husband as the “real head of household,” “a worker,” “employed,” and “always 
working hard for his family.” In addition, women in rural Sumadija District, 


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A man who just stays home and has little responsibility around the house is 
good enough, because most men drink and hardly stay home. 

—Village women’s focus group, Samtse, Bhutan 

There is a difference. In the past, the men didn't want to help in the kitchen. 
Now, men are more willing to help in the kitchen. In the past, boys weren't even 
allowed to go into the kitchen; now hoys are told to help in the kitchen. 

—Village women’s focus group, Nagari Bukik Batabuah, Indonesia 


Serbia, said he should be “handsome, open to compromise, capable, responsible, 
reasonable, mature, smart, permissive, and realistic.” In Chiclayo, Peru, the 
women believed that a good husband should work with his wife “as a team” to 
make decisions and raise their children. He is also described as a loving and 
engaged lather. 

Yet, relative to a good wife, both women’s and men’s focus groups were much 
more hkely to qualify a good husband by what he should not do. They often listed 
undesirable behaviors that a husband needs to avoid instead of affirming positive 
characteristics or mentioning the prescriptions of the husband’s role. A good 
husband does not “cheat,” “drink [alcohol],” “gamble,” “scold and beat his wife or 
children,” or “stay out late.” According to a men’s group from Ba Dinh District, 
Vietnam, their view of a good wife is a woman seemingly “perfect in all aspects,” 
and her partner is expected “to be faithful,” and to cease the drinking, gambling, 
adultery, and late nights [table 1.1). 

Focus groups across all countries agreed that men’s role as main provider and 
responsible for the economic security of the household is central. Reflecting on 
the strong hold that this specific aspect of the male role has, participants voiced 
concerns about a good husband’s adequacy with breadwinning. In communities 
with a weak local economy, it was often enough if the good husband earned 
something and, ideally, stayed out of trouble. In a village outside Paro, Bhutan, 
women viewed a good husband as “one who is very understanding, supportive, 
hardworking, who does not have extramarital affairs, who does not resort to 
physical (domestic) violence, and who brings in steady income and provides for 
the whole family.” The women also indicated that a good husband does not nec¬ 
essarily have to make a good income, but “he can contribute in a lot of other 
ways, such as spending time with his family and doing jobs that require physical 
strength.” In this village, conditions were difficult, jobs scarce, and domestic 
violence common. 

Compared to rural men, urban good husbands shoulder more parenting and 
housework obligations. In Aden, the Republic of Yemen, women said that a good 
husband “helps the mother raise the children... [and is] loving and attentive to 
his children.” Likewise, in Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh), India, a woman noted 


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that a good husband “nowadays even takes care of the children if it is necessary.” 
In rural Tanzania, where gender norms remain quite traditional, a good husband 
is involved in few household tasks and is appreciated if he only visits with friends 
“until early evening and then comes home for supper.” 

The focus groups also reflected on the good husband of the previous genera¬ 
tion. They generally reported him as being a good provider and hardworking, but 
more strict and less affectionate toward his wife and children than today’s good 
husband. Groups disagreed about whether a good husband of the past was more 
violent toward his wife or more likely to have affairs than today; however, most 
conveyed that good husbands used to drink less. The women’s focus groups were 
much less likely than men’s to look favorably upon the good husband of the past 
who “hardly listened to his wife.” In contrast to the women’s views of favorable 
trends, the men often expressed nostalgia for the days when husbands enjoyed 
more respect and knew better “how to keep his family under control.” A man 
from University Quarter, West Bank and Gaza, mentioned a time when a good 
wife “helped her husband and did not make him feel that he is lacking 
anything.” 

In sum, men almost everywhere continue to be the dominant household 
authority figures and breadwinners. For their part, women continue to be held to 
strict account for the large majority of household work and care, no matter what 
other roles they may play beyond the household. Depending on the neighbor¬ 
hood or village, the relaxation of gender norms was portrayed as either incremental 
or a somewhat faster blurring of women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities. 
But these changes are generally happening more quickly in urban contexts. 

Finally, the focus groups conveyed ideahzed notions about good wives and 
good husbands who enjoy harmonious and cooperative relations, but their 
ensuing discussions of how marital relations have changed over the generations 
suggested a more stressful picture. The men expressed a particular concern that 
the good husband is losing control over his life and his family, and their testimo¬ 
nies seem to question their present roles in society. Their frustrations cannot be 
taken lightly. In general, the discussions about a good wife and good husband 
display the same patterns that we find elsewhere in the dataset; women perceive 
that they are gaining more independence and freedom, while men often 
expressed a growing sense of powerlessness. 

The Good Girl, the Good Boy 

Girls and boys learn at an early age how they are expected to behave according 
to their sex. Gender norms are passed on by parents, school teachers, and peers. 
Furthermore, when they reach adolescence, any flexibility that the girls and boys 
may have had while growing up tends to disappear, and compliance with gender 
norms is tightly enforced. In adolescence, at the same time that the physical 
changes of puberty appear, gender role definition intensifies. Girls move from 
childhood to adult roles, such as wife, mother, and worker; and boys become 
workers, providers, and fathers.^ 

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[The traits of a good hoy are the] same as girls, hut [the good hoy] also 
does house-work like raking ... plus his own laundry, like washing his school 
uniform. 

—Urban girls’ focus group, Suva, Fiji 


Figure 1 .2 Characteristics of a Good Girl 


^ 25 


o 20 


15 


% 10 


Helps at Good Respectful Obedient Studies Decently Good Polite Does not Religious 
home behavior dressed friends date 


According to girls ■ According to boys 


Note: Data from 82 focus groups. 


Figure 1.3 Characteristics of a Good Boy 



Good Respectful Obedient Religious Helps at Studies No bad Good 
behavior home habits friends 

■ According to boys ■ According to girls 


Note: Data from 82 focus groups. 


When imagining a good girl, the focus groups of adolescent girls and boys 
provided remarkably consistent responses (figure 1.2).^ Most often, they 
mentioned that a good girl models expected gender behaviors for a woman inside 
the household: she helps around the house and is well-behaved, obedient, and 
respectful. A good girl also goes to school. Likewise, a gocrd boy goes to school, 
but like a good man, he is also described by certain things that he is expected not 
to do (figure 1.3). Girls see a good boy as helping around the house—much like 


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a good girl—but boys tend to think this is less important than being respectful or 
doing other things. These patterns suggest that girls perceived fewer gender dif¬ 
ferences between the sexes in household roles and identified with more modern 
gender norms than did boys. 

In Thimphu, Bhutan, girls depicted their good girl as “a very reliable daughter; 
she can take care of the house and at the same time behave well outside 
too.” These girls required that both good girls and good boys “take care of parents.” 
In rural Velugodu (Andhra Pradesh), India, boys said, “A good girl is religious, soft 
spoken, and obedient; she does all the domestic chores under the supervision of 
her mother. A good boy is religious, respectful to elders, and helpful.” In many 
contexts, boys do help around the house, but more often with discrete tasks and 
not the time-consuming, constant daily chores expected of girls. In the Republic 
ol Yemen and the Dominican Republic, none of the boys’ focus groups associated 
their good boy with being helpful to their family. In Suva, Fiji, as the opening 
quote to this chapter attests, the girls imagined a good boy as useful around the 
house, while the boys oftered no such indication in their list of traits for a good 
boy and imagined that a good girl “stays home, cooks, and washes dishes.” 

Other markers of a good girl and boy, as with a good wife and husband, 
include many desirable behavioral traits, such as honesty, good morals, and 
respectful and decent treatment of others. And good children (boys and girls) are 
expected to be obedient, deferential to adult authority, and good students. Yet, 
a good girl also should dress decently, act politely, and not date, which were not 
included in a good boy’s attributes. (If anything, a good boy should not date too 
many girls.) And, unlike good girls, good boys were cautioned by many focus 
groups not to smoke, drink, use drugs, or steal. Focus groups were also more 
permissive of a good boy’s behaviors and interactions with the opposite sex than 
with those of a good girl. In Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the boys said that a 
good boy does not “run often with girls,” while girls indicated that a good boy 
“does not force the girls,” but in Lautoka, Fiji, the good boy “might have a 
girlfriend.” 

In the descriptions of a bad girl and a bad boy, the focus groups specified 
stronger gender differences in their defining traits (figures 1.4 and 1.5). Nearly 
one-quarter of all the comments by boys about a bad girl identified her as pro¬ 
miscuous (e.g., many boyfriends, a prostitute); however, less than 10 percent of 
girls’ comments mentioned promiscuity for a bad girl. Next in frequency were 
references, by both girls’ and boys’ focus groups, to bad girls’ bad behavior; 
gossipy, dishonest, low morals, disobedient, and disrespectful (talks back, does 
not obey parents, swears). Boys were more likely than girls to think that a bad 
girl shirks her domestic responsibilities. In rural Koudipally Mandal 
(Andhra Pradesh), India, the boys said that a bad girl “won't help her mother 
with the household chores.” 

If boys expressed more concern about a bad girl’s promiscuity, the girls’ focus 
groups significantly stressed a bad boy’s vices—smoking, drinking, and drugs. 
Boys saw this as a problem, too, but not nearly as important. Next in frequency 
for a bad boy are deeply aggressive behaviors, such as killing, gang fighting, and 


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Figure 1.4 Characteristics of a Bad Girl 


Does not help at home 
Promiscuous 
Does not study 
Stays out a lot 
Indecently dressed 
Disobedient 
Disrespectful 
Bad behavior 



5 10 

Share of total mentions, % 
According to boys ■ According to girls 


Note: Data from 82 focus groups. 


Figure 1.5 Characteristics of a Bad Boy 


Promiscuous 
Stays out a lot 
Disobedient 
Not religious 
Does not study 
Steals 
Bad behavior 
Disrespectful 
Aggressive behavior 
Bad habits 



0 5 10 15 20 25 


Share of total mentions, % 

■ According to girls ■ According to boys 


Note: Data from 82 focus groups. 


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The Rules We Live By: Gender Norms and Ideal Images 


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rape. Both boys’ and girls’ focus groups attributed violence to a bad boy, 
but only rarely was it mentioned about a bad girl. In urban Lautoka, Fiji, for 
instance, the boys described a bad girl as “wearing a mini skirt, being too 
outgoing, going to nightclubs, and being a discipline problem,’’ but these char¬ 
acteristics were much less severe than those portraying a bad boy: “smoking, 
drinking alcohol, sniffing glue, roaming around, having a future in jail or a future 
of poverty and crime.” 

Norms of good and bad femininity and masculinity take root at very young 
ages and help explain the persistence of gender differences in attitudes and 
behaviors from one generation to the next. The different normative yardsticks 
that are applied to girls and boys set-the stage for stressful gender relations as 
adolescents head into adult years and need to manage relationships with the 
opposite sex. Girls and boys are both under pressure to conform to similar desir¬ 
able expectations. Yet, for girls, expectations of gender-defining household roles 
are changing. In their testimonies, the girls themselves redefined housework as a 
practice that ideally should be normative for both boys and girls, and their good 
boy reflects that ideal. Boys are not as eager to include domestic responsibilities 
in their concept of a good boy. Also, both adolescent groups felt that good and 
bad boys are at risk for the same risky and violent behaviors that burden 
their fathers. 

Community-Level Views of Gender Norms 

What constitutes ideal gender-appropriate behavior in the household does not 
stop when individuals leave the domestic sphere. As the girls’ and boys’ focus 
groups discussed, their behavior outside their home marks them as being good as 
much as their domestic responsibilities do. Prevailing views on gender-appropriate 
behavior, when reproduced at the community level, can open or close opportuni¬ 
ties for women. 

In this section, we explore two areas where community sanctioning is more 
likely to have an impact on women’s agency: (a) the ability to combine their 
productive and reproductive tasks, and (b) freedom of movement. As shown in 
World Development Report 2012, women’s ability to use their time to work is 
central to their economic empowerment, while freedom of movement is one of 
the dimensions of their agency.^ 

Views on Working Mothers 

Given how norms affect women’s roles, we examine the qualities that young 
adults and adults find desirable and undesirable in a mother, and their opinions 
of mothers who balance family and work (if any). In many communities, the 
desirable qualities of a mother are the traditional ones of care, affection, and 
household management. But the younger groups in our study overwhelmingly 
highlighted as noteworthy women’s (mothers’) desire and ability to earn an 
income and contribute to household wellbeing together with caring for 
the family life. 

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Figure 1.6 Perceptions of What Women's Role Should Be 

Rural young men 

I 

Rural young women llli^BMBBBBMMBBBBI^* 

Rural adult men 
Rural adult women 
Urban young men 

Urban young women BIMilBBBBMBIBBBiMBB 

Urban adult men 

Urban adult women ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 

- 1 - 1 -- 1 - 1 

-1 -0.5 -0 0.5 1 

Share of total mentions 

■ Women's sole role is care ■ Women should combine work and care 


Note: Data from 370 focus groups. 


While opinions split over defining the primary role for women, the partici¬ 
pants clearly preferred that women accomplish both work and care tasks 
(figure 1.6]. For adult men, however, the overwhelming majority (regardless of 
location] considered care to be women’s major and only role. Little was said 
about the conciliation of roles between men and women. 

The choices that women and men make regarding work are informed as much 
by their definitions of masculinity, femininity, and views of care responsibilities 
at home as by market opportunities. Leaving the economic context in the back¬ 
ground for now—and how it constrains or facilitates work choices for women— 
we probe deeper into the justifications men and women give for choosing to 
work or stay home, and the normative (traditional] gender limitations imposed 
upon women in job searches and actual employment. 

In many communities, women approach the prospect of work through the 
lens of norms that restrict their initiative, mobility, and autonomy. Examples of 
these restrictions appeared throughout focus group conversations in all commu¬ 
nities and included taboos on commercial or social exchanges between women 
and unrelated men,^ concerns for safety that prevent movement, and concerns 
over women’s honor being tarnished in public. Other traditions or established 
practices regarding women’s economic participation are equally powerful. For 
example, in Hung Yen District, Vietnam, where women’s participation in the 
labor force is almost 70 percent, the range of women’s productive activities is 
limited because “according to long-standing social norms and prejudices, women 
are supposed to take care of the family and breed chicken or pigs at home. They 
can only do small things.” As a consequence, women in these contexts usually opt 
to work from home or in jobs that do not contravene the severe norms of their 
households and communities. 

Where no such restrictions are present, acceptable professional jobs for 
women are often just extensions of their caretaker roles at home: teacher, nurse. 


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47 


and cook. Moreover, women’s household (gender] duties are as powerful as any 
religious belief in limiting women’s movements and ability to work for pay. 
Women negotiate work choices from the options that meet their communities’ 
requirements for appropriate work and accountability for household duties. 

When women do find employment, they face a new challenge. Can they 
perform well in their dual roles of workers and mothers? Women sometimes 
fail in their attempts to do both equally well. Whether or not women fulfill 
their role as mother and wife often is the deciding factor for accepting working 
mothers as a positive development. Taking on outside and household work 
simultaneously can exact a high cost from women. A young woman from the 
University Quarter, West Bank and Gaza, saw no problem with a mother who 
decides to start working, but she noted that there are trade-offs one way or 
another; “No woman is a superwoman [and] no woman who works will be able 
to balance that with another role. One has to happen at the expense of the 
other. For example, my mom’s work as a teacher happened at the expense of 
her health.” 

The weight of a double workload, hard as it is, has even more burdens, includ¬ 
ing what it means for women to step out into the public space. Working mothers 
must keep their (and their family’s) reputations intact. Even in urban contexts, 
working women and mothers must behave with decorum and politeness, pass up 
after-work recreational activities, and return home at an appropriate hour; other¬ 
wise, they face being stigmatized as negligent, materialistic, hedonistic, and even 
sexually promiscuous. 

The contents and the consequences of the stigma attached to working 
mothers vary between communities, but they tend to center on the effects on 
children. In many cases, the widespread view holds that a working mother has 
abandoned her children. In .Jaipur (Odisha), India, young women described the 
attitudes of their community as “friends and neighbors who don’t have high 
opinions of [working mothers] who think money is more important than 
children and don’t have the maternal feelings for children that mothers had 20 
or 30 years ago.” Some sample communities expressed concern that the children 
of working mothers will be negatively affected by their absence. They turned 
working mothers’ own worries about the well-being of their children against 
them in the form of social criticism: their children may end up spending too 
much time in the street, engage in criminal behavior, and in general deviate from 
the right path because their mother is not present. These negative perceptions 
and pressures have serious impacts on women’s self-esteem and behavior, as well 
as their agency. 

In our sample communities where normative change around gender seems to 
be unfolding, accounts show a mismatch between personal, household, and com¬ 
munity norms, and between generations. For young women, in particular, the 
decisions women make to work are not in sync with their community’s norma¬ 
tive framework. But it does not deter them, especially when they need an income 
or are determined to challenge the norms and affirm their independence. Young 
women see themselves as not needing or wanting to depend on men; they believe 


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The Rules We Live By; Gender Norms and Ideal Images 


a woman should provide for herself first. And although they know older genera¬ 
tions oppose this way of thinking and believe that women should only be house¬ 
wives, many young women feel it is important to be able to provide everything 
needed for a home. More and more, younger women support the right of women 
to get a job and earn a salary; younger generations do not condemn such behavior 
as vehemently as older generations do. 

Young urban women’s views reveal that they are experiencing—by 
themselves—the changes in the normative frameworks of their societies. Their 
male counterparts are increasingly aware of notions of equality and are slowly 
showing willingness to share in the responsibilities of household and child care. 
Not only do some men [especially younger men) agree that women should work, 
but they also think that giving women access to areas where they have been 
excluded (such as certain types of jobs) benefits everyone. Even among young 
rural men, the extent of approval for working mothers is higher than with older 
generations, and they are willing to voice their support even in the face of com¬ 
munity opposition or criticism. This generational change signals a trend in the 
direction of greater gender equality. While partly driven by a shift in norms, 
a large part of the changes in opinions about working mothers is stimulated or 
facilitated by economic conditions. 

From Poland to Vietnam, there is evidence that young women expect men to 
take on as much housework as women do if they both are working: 

[It is a] partnership. He cooks dinner for me; he washes, clears up, dusts. I would 
not choose to marry him, if we did not share these responsibilities. (Adult woman, 
Martynice, Poland) 

[Husbands and wives] should do everything together. Everyone is tired when they 
get home after work, so they share the work. Trey can help each other with many 
things. (Adult woman. Hung Yen District, Vietnam) 

Younger generations are embracing change. When asked what they think about 
working mothers, the responses of young adults in the focus groups were unequiv¬ 
ocally positive. From Bhutan to Fiji, from Sudan to the Republic of Yemen, young 
women are seeing and demanding change. While it is still common practice for 
women to stay home and take care of household chores, this is changing as more 
and more women question the strict gender divisions in responsibility for the 
household, become more educated, and work in more diverse occupations— 
especially those considered inappropriate for women in the past. 

The Good Woman (Not) in Public 

A bad girl goes out a lot and a bad wife spends more time away from home than 
inside the house; men and boys, on the other hand, routinely have enjoyed more 
freedom in their ability to move. Women’s limited mobility has long affected 
their social connections, enjoyment of free time, economic options, and possibili¬ 
ties for civic engagement. Diverse, interlocking factors tie women to their homes, 
including local traditions governing women’s and girl’s roles, religious practices, 
limited public safety, lack of time, and poor transportation infrastructure. 


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49 


As long as boys are everywhere, we can’t move freely. They say that you are 
walking around and showing yourself off 

—Young urban woman, Aden, the Republic of Yemen 

Women go out less. They go out only if we take them. 

—Village man, Comendador, the Dominican Republic 

She [wife] stays at home and does the house chores. She does not move around 
the community gossiping. 

—Village man in a semi-rural community of Ngonyameni, South Africa 


Gender norms surrounding concerns for women’s and girl’s reputations and 
family honor also curtail their freedoms. These barriers are easing, however. From 
comments heard in the focus groups, women and girls are able to leave the house 
more than previous generations. Yet, the difficult reality is that they have much 
less freedom than men and boys to go out in public. 

Many of the focus groups with younger and older adult village women 
reported that they face heavy pressures not to move around their communities 
independently. “The men can move freely in and out of the village and even 
travel far away from their homes, too. Women cannot go anywhere, much less 
alone, because of tradition and culture,” said a young village woman in Boyina 
Bagh, Afghanistan. In Koudipally Mandal (Andhra Pradesh), India, young women 
explained that the school is too far away from the village for girls to attend and 
“in our Reddy community,® even if we are poor, they don’t allow us to go out and 
work. Men care [too] much about the social status.” As a result, women have 
developed alternative strategies: “Some of the women like me have started to 
learn tailoring and are doing the work at home.” In a semi-rural community of 
Ngonyameni, South Africa, women were asked what it means to have little free¬ 
dom, and one replied, “It means she is controlled by her husband and cannot visit 
her friends.” 

In urban areas, women are also pressured to stay home or nearby in their 
neighborhoods. Young women in the focus group in Jaipur (Odisha), India, said 
they are free to move about their neighborhood during the day, but “if [a woman] 
comes back late at night, then neighbors talk bad about her, and parents and 
other family members get pushed [to make her behave].” Young women in 
Dirbas, West Bank and Gaza, agreed that women were restricted as if they were 
small children by “social circumstances ... customs, traditions, and public opin¬ 
ion.” In this community and many others in the sample, seclusion practices 
require that women be accompanied by a male guardian when in public, 
although educated women with good jobs and poor or widowed women who 
need to work enjoy more mobility. Still, young men in Dirbas warned that 

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it is better for a woman to “stay at home” instead of “tiring herself’ and bringing 
“problems to the family from her work.” 

In diverse contexts, women indicated that they may face harsh discipline for 
leaving housework and children for short periods. They may be openly shamed 
and mocked for speaking with strangers, wearing insufficiently modest attire, 
or making the slightest missteps that may be deemed sexually provocative or a 
sign of loose character. “I may have freedom as a woman, but if 1 want to go 
and dance, my husband will give me a black eye,” said a woman from the 
National Capital District, Papua New Guinea. Aside from household obliga¬ 
tions, concerns for women’s reputations and family honor give rise to strong 
normative pressures on women to refrain from working or socializing outside 
the home. 

Even in communities in the sample where large numbers of women have been 
part of the workforce for decades, the extent of some women’s mobility is still 
very constrained. “Some women cannot leave the house or even talk to or hang 
out with neighbors. We call them ‘kuper’ (lacking a social network),” explained a 
woman from East .lakarta, Indonesia. In this same women’s locus group, three 
women volunteered that they are largely secluded in their homes, but for three 
different reasons. One woman saw herself as having no freedom because of her 
husband’s views: “1 can’t attend gatherings at the mosque or go sightseeing. My 
husband doesn’t let me. 1 obey him because he is my husband.” The second 
woman’s limited mobility was due to time constraints of meeting her responsi¬ 
bilities at home: “I don’t really have freedom because 1 always have to do the 
laundry.” The third participant was mostly concerned about community percep¬ 
tions: “If 1 go out by myself^ the neighbors will talk. So now 1 sell stuff or wash 
clothes [from home].” 

Problems of safety also disproportionately affect women. “By six o’clock in the 
evening, you should be indoors if you are female,” warned a woman from Umlazi 
township B (near Durban), South Africa. And in Lautoka, Fiji, “A man can travel 
alone at night, but not a woman because of safety issues.” Almost nowhere is it 
safe for women to move about at night, and even during the day large sections 
of their neighborhoods may also be off limits because they are unsafe. Given the 
incidence of mugging, groping, and verbal abuse, public transportation can be 
especially risky for women and girls. Risk of assault is reported even in communi¬ 
ties considered safe by the focus groups, indicating how vulnerable women are to 
harassment and violence, which are often acceptable. 

Although a minority, focus groups with young adults sometimes indicated 
that young women are flouting the norms that limit their freedom. Although not 
as much as men, more women are driving cars in Moldova, Poland, and Serbia, 
for example, and more villages are providing electricity, water, and transportation 
services that free women from the worst drudgeries and give them more time to 
venture beyond their households. 

Yet, in most places sampled in this study, getting out the front door remains a 
daily struggle for women. And men, as well as women, acknowledged that 
women’s restricted physical mobility in public is a manifestation of much wider 


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51 


gender power struggles. According to a 39-year-old man from Dirbas, West Bank 
and Gaza, 

a man can go anywhere to work ... [yet he] gets jealous of his sister if she goes to 
a nearhy place to work. So how do you think it will happen that she can go to a 
faraway place? ... But the man’s responsibilities are different. He has to work; 
otherwise, he will never huild his home or get married. But for the girl it is 
different. 

Similarly, a man from another urban neighborhood in the West Bank and Gaza 
argued that the lack of public safety for women is a troubling consequence of the 
transition underway in gender norms: “Women have just started entering society, 
so the man is still trying to maintain his control.” 

Whether in their homes or out in public, deeply embedded gender norms 
continue to guide the preferences and behaviors of girls and boys, women and 
men, in the communities visited by the research teams. But around these norms, 
we also see diverse manifestations of change along with tension over these 
changes. Young women, in particular, harbor ideals for a world where they too 
can enjoy whatever opportunities present themselves. Men, on the other hand— 
across generations and especially in rural areas—appear less willing to accept 
women’s changing roles and aspirations. 


Notes 

1. The title of chapter 1 is adapted from Bicchieri (2006). 

2. In tact, the exploration of what makes a good or bad wife, husband, girl, or boy was 
conducted within the context of the current community, the previous generation, and 
the future (of the adolescents). Focus group facilitators launched discussions in all 
focus groups with this question: “For a woman to be seen as a good wife in your 
community, what is she like? What does she do? Why?” All adult groups were asked 
how things had changed compared with the previous generation. Adolescents were 
asked how they saw themselves in the future at age 25 and what they thought of their 
parent’s lives. 

3. It is important to note that the frequencies (or numbers) of mention are not 
statistically representative data. The samples were not randomly selected and the 
frequencies show only how often certain themes appeared in focus group 
conversations. We present the coded frequencies at different junctures to help 
convey the pattern of findings that emerged from systematic work with the narrative 
data in the field reports. 

4. Rowlands (1997) shows this in Honduras, and Das (2008) in Bangladesh. 

5. Bruce, Mensch, and Greene (1998) note that, during this period, health and social 
behaviors are established that have a lifetime of consequences. Puberty triggers a 
marked divergence in gender-based trajectories. 

6. The field work with adolescents was conducted in eight economies: Burkina Faso, the 
Dominican Republic, India, Fiji, Bhutan, Sudan, the Republic of Yemen, and West 
Bank and Gaza. Facilitators asked the children to imagine: “what is a good girl like?; 
what makes her a good girl?; what is a bad girl like?; and how would you describe 
them?” The same questions were asked about a good and bad boy. 


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The Rules We Live By: Gender Norms and Ideal Images 


7. See World Development Report 2012 chapter 4 for further discussion of women’s 
freedom of movement and chapter 5 for time use and work. 

8. The consequences of such “inappropriate” exchanges range from refusing permission 
for women to work outside the home to insisting on segregated jobs. 

9. A higher caste predominantly found in Andhra Pradesh. 


References 

Bicchieri, C. 2006. The Grammar of Society. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. 
Bruce, J., B. S. Mensch, and M. E. Greene. 1998. The Uncharted Passage: Girb’ Adolescence 
in the Developing World. New York; The Population Council. 

Das, M. 2008. "Whispers to Voices: Gender and Social Transformation in Bangladesh.” 
Bangladesh Development Series Paper 22, South Asia Sustainable Development 
Department, World Bank, Washington, DC. 

Rowlands, J. 1997. Questioning Empowerment: Working with Women in Honduras. Oxford, 
UK.; Oxfam. 


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CHAPTER 2 


Negotiating the Norms That Bind: 
A Winding Road 


Negotiations—explicit or not—have been happening over gender norms over the 
last generation in our sample communities, as this chapter details. Significant 
shifts are taking place in these norms and, more importantly, are not generally the 
result of conflict between couples. Instead of abrupt and conflict-ridden changes, 
we find that norms are relaxing slowly and sometimes inadvertently, and are 
creeping into the everyday lives of the people throughout our sample. But people 
do not always notice the subtly shifting forces, so often the process goes 
unrecognized.^ 

The evidence collected from the many focus group conversations on intra¬ 
household and gender relations reveals a widespread tendency toward greater 
acceptance of more equitable gender relations and modification of gender-ascribed 
responsibilities. Members of almost every group testified to the presence of these 
changes when asked to reflect upon generational changes in the definitions of 
gender roles and aspirations for the future. The large majority of the adults and 
young adult participants expressly wanted more cooperation and discussion 
between men and women. Moreover, as discussed in chapter 1, men’s involve¬ 
ment in domestic work and childrearing is increasingly valued, as is the women’s 
right to work and pursue productive activities. 

Yet, despite encouraging signs of norms bending toward greater gender 
equality, this chapter also addresses countervailing forces that impede faster 
change. The comments from the focus groups make clear that new practices 
emerge and exist with ease alongside traditional inequitable practices in the same 
households and communities. Within most every group, participants raised 
discordant perspectives and opinions about how much change is perceived or 
desired. To the progressive voices driving change, normative ideals and aspirations 
may be well ahead of actual behaviors. Focus groups from diverse contexts also 
elaborated on how slowly changing norms that still sanction male dominance and 
aggression were significant triggers for marital conflict, particularly under condi¬ 
tions of economic stress. 


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Negotiating the Norms That Bind: A Winding Road 


Men in the past were very strict about tradition and that everything they do be 
done the traditional way. ... Nowadays, parents—including fathers—let their 
daughters have more freedom, [for example] if they want to dress a certain 
way. ... Because life in general is changing, it’s hard to keep the traditional 
way of raising children. 

—Adult woman, Fiji 


To explore these dynamics, we first discuss how we distinguish a relaxation 
from a change in gender norms in the dataset, and then present focus group 
accounts of local trends in daily time use, household roles, marital relations, and 
parental aspirations for their children. We then explore the participants’ percep¬ 
tions of norm change and how uneven they are. We close by synthesizing 
accounts about the persistence of domestic violence against women (in nearly 
one-third of the study communities), which is perhaps the starkest evidence of 
gender inequality and lack of agency in the case of women. The chapter high¬ 
lights forces at play that press both for and against norm change in the lives of 
the study communities. 

The Quiet Relaxing and Changing of Norms 

We asked focus groups to consider gender norms from many angles and how they 
are changing, as discussed in the introduction to part 1. By comparing responses 
by the younger and older generations, we can assess how these norms may be 
evolving in the study communities. In this report, we also look at the focus 
groups’ responses to questions about differences between current and past 
generations and about their aspirations for themselves and their children. [The 
recall period for these questions ranges from a decade to one generation, depend¬ 
ing on the question.) The sampling frame in each country includes 1-2 commu¬ 
nities chosen by the researchers for specific attributes [e.g., girls’ school 
enrollment was high in the country or the local economy was dynamic). We 
hypothesized that these select communities may likely provide more incentives 
or opportunities for individuals (of both sexes) to challenge the boundaries of 
stifling norms. For comparative purposes, the country-level sampling frames also 
contain urban and rural communities that have the opposite experience, i.e. with 
fewer educational and economic opportunities. 

When investigating norms, it is important to differentiate acts of compliance 
with the norm from resistance because they imply different levels of agency. For 
example, a woman who limits her fertility in a community where having many 
children is the norm necessarily pushes against the expected choices and behav¬ 
iors for local women. She is demonstrating a different level of agency or of 
empowerment (if successful) than a woman who limits her fertility in an envi¬ 
ronment where small families are the norm (Kabeer 1999). It is important to 


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If she [the unfe] is hardworking, goes to work early, comes back home late, 
and cares for her family, surely people would understand and sympathize 
with her. 


—23-year-old urban woman, Ba Dinh District, Hanoi, Vietnam 


recognize that men have an advantage in initiatives that uphold or challenge the 
norms: as the dominant gender, they can more easily flout or champion norms to 
suit their interests as long as that challenge does not aim at breaking the basis of 
their own male identity.^ By contrast, gender power relations put women at a 
decided disadvantage if their interests require breaking a gender norm or holding 
their partner to account.^ 

In addition to the differences between norm compliance and resistance, it is 
important to distinguish relaxation from change of a gender norm. By relaxation, 
we mean that women and men are challenging and perhaps crossing the bound¬ 
aries of traditional gender roles or conduct, although their actions are not recog¬ 
nized as a legitimate and acceptable norm. They are assuming new roles or 
responsibilities, but are not setting a new standard. For instance, in Zabibu village, 
Tanzania, the key informant (who was interviewed to provide information about 
his village) reported, “Rarely do women work for pay here. They have to stay at 
home and take care of the household and family. But what work can these 
women do? They have not even gone to school.” Later in his interview, however, 
he added, “Women are mostly involved in digging holes to plant grapes, tending 
vegetable gardens, and making ‘vyungu’ [clay pots].” Women are working, which 
is a relaxation of the norm that restricts them from breadwinning tasks—and 
they may even be preparing and selling goods in the market. Nevertheless, these 
activities have not yet been recognized as income generation, but rather as an 
extension of their domestic duties. Hence, it is acceptable within the traditional 
norms. 

Across the community sample, we find signs of gender norms in transition and 
uncertainty. Women’s pursuit of an economic role or a larger say in managing 
their households can have unpredictable consequences where these practices are 
not widely accepted. On one hand, such initiatives may be interpreted as a 
gender-norm violation and thus subject to sanctions that can damage a woman’s 
reputation and status. On the other hand, if a new role or conduct becomes 
widely accepted, it may confer on women new status, respect, and influence 
(or power) in their relations with others. The day-to-day activities that quietly 
resist or flout norms for women’s roles and behaviors may not trigger a complete 
change or cause an unfair practice to be discarded. These initiatives are neverthe¬ 
less important because over time they can potentially affect power relations 
within a household. In many cases in our dataset, where a relaxation of gender 
norms is evident, men’s and women’s unequal authority in the household 

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Negotiating the Norms That Bind: A Winding Road 


remains largely intact, even though the gender differences in their roles, 
responsibilities, and behaviors are narrowing and disappearing. 

Although it may be a subtle difference, we are referring to a change in gender 
norm in contexts where both women’s and men’s focus groups reported 
a significant shift in a gender role or in gender power relations. For example, 
in some communities, husbands shop for groceries when a wife does not feel like 
cooking and are deeply involved in raising and educating their children. But 
reports of such engagement were relatively rare in our dataset. A man who 
admits that he prepares his own dinner may be teased rather than encouraged in 
many focus groups. 

The processes of relaxing and changing norms of behavior, which are so 
central to our identities and status with others, seem to be slow and hidden. 
As Ridgeway and Correll (2004, 528) explain, 

to the extent that people continue to deeply hold beliefs that men and women are 
essentially different, separate categories of people, they will likely resist beliefs that 
there are absolutely no instrumental differences between men and women in the 
"things that count,” even in the face of clear displays of competence by women. 
This tension between the belief that men and women are fundamentally different 
and the displays of similar levels of competence between men and women may 
facilitate some cultural redefinition in what counts at a given period of history. 

The contexts where we see these rarer changes in norms are important. Notably, 
Poland and Serbia have a longer history of gender-sensitive legislation and higher 
levels of girls’ and boys’ education. There, men and women can draw from a wide 
range of public and private discourses and institutions that favor gender equity. 
We also see important movements in norms in the other countries in the 
sample—especially in rapidly urbanizing cities and where higher education rates 
are nibbling at the edges of traditional cultures. In several contexts, the data 
reveal the presence of other factors that can drive change, such as more egalitar¬ 
ian traditional practices, campaigns to introduce new norms, or decisive policy 
action by a government.'^ 

Timing Is All: Negotiating Opportunities and Gender-Specific 
Responsibilities 

The allocation of resources—particularly scarce ones, such as time—reflects prior 
normative considerations in communities and households. One area where 
gender differences are most conspicuous is individuals’ use of their time. Time 
use responds to the “gender contract” obligations, reflecting dominant norms 
about the division of labor among family members. These obligations affect indi¬ 
vidual work choices, physical mobility, access to opportunities, and the possibility 
of free time. In our analysis of time use by the young adult and adolescent focus 
groups, we find that they have shifted their daily schedules in ways that offer 
more opportunities for education, work, and free time, despite the persistence of 
gender disparities and urban-rural differences. 


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57 


We expected the adolescents and young adults in our sample to more easily 
articulate views about progress and change in norms because their life experiences 
reflect gains from previous generations. Indeed, the adolescents’ accounts of how 
they spend their days reveal that they constantly negotiate between taking 
advantage of “new” opportunities and tending to “old” duties in their households. 
Yet, almost everywhere, girls and young women still must devote more time to 
household and care-giving tasks than boys and young men. This is the case 
whether the young women attend school or not; however, those in school who 
must study spend fewer hours on household tasks, particularly in urban areas. 

The main message from the evidence regarding time use is simple: men have 
more free time because they do little or no housework. Even when men work 
long days, they usually end it with some form of distraction or entertainment. 
Women very rarely pause to enjoy some leisure time. When they are not working 
for pay or studying, they are tending the house and children. The very definition 
of free time is adapted to this gendered arrangement of the use of time. Unlike 
men, women use their free or spare time to work; they simply shift activities. 
Women are the losers in the time distribution game. Men and women readily 
acknowledge this fact and, while there is evidence that urban men particularly 
are doing more to help around the house, inequalities in free time, however, 
remain. 

Young women have more opportunities now for education and work than 
previous generations, and they are aware of it. Young men likewise find them¬ 
selves seeking more education than in the past, but they also realize more free 
time now. To some extent, their gain in free time is due to their entering the labor 
market at an older age and to decreasing demands on young men to supplement 
their household’s income by working for pay or helping in family businesses and 
farms. Along with increased opportunities for schooling, young women in both 
rural and urban contexts also seem to have rid themselves of some of the burdens 
of being an unpaid family worker. But only urban women see themselves doing 
less work inside the home than the previous generation. Their circumstances 
have changed the most, due to living in cities, and so have their expectations. 
Young women in urban communities want more time to work for pay, in line 
with their rising aspirations and opportunities. Young women in rural communities 
long for paid work, but mostly they aspire to do less work inside the home, which 
primarily occupies their days. However all women—urban and rural—strive for 
free time. 

Incessant Activity 

In both rural and urban areas, young and adult women have no or very little free 
time. They switch from one activity to another and, with few exceptions, are 
constantly engaged. In a less dynamic rural setting, such as Floresti District, 
Moldova, “women don’t have much spare time. They work and take care of 
children, their husband, and the household. Free time appears late in the evening 
or during the winter when there is less farm work.” Women in the more dynamic 
city of Bhubaneswar (Odisha), India, reported being just as busy during their free 

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It seems like there is no end to what we women must do. 

—Village woman, Sungai Piiar District, Indonesia 


time hours. They work for the family business, teach their children, clean and 
organize the house, go shopping for clothes and food, and the list continues. 
Only three activities the women mentioned can be associated with a traditional 
idea of leisure: eating snacks outside, reading magazines, and buying cosmetics. 
A woman from urban Dobrowice, Poland (a middling community in terms of 
economic opportunities and normative change], noted that while men “play ball, 
go fishing, sit in the front of the television, or drink a beer, we are ironing as a 
form of relaxation.” 

The different uses of time by men and women underline the prevailing gender 
order in the community. If men are expected to enjoy free time after their 
working hours, norms that insist women not forget their reproductive duties, 
even when engaging in productive paid jobs, will also persist. This disparity was 
overwhelmingly affirmed throughout the sample. For men in many communities, 
women’s work at home sustains the right order of things and is inviolate. The 
normative framework and power relations that impose a double burden on 
women (in and out of the house) do not disappear or change when economic 
conditions do. Unemployed young and adult men have to find ways to employ 
their extra time when they have less income-generating work, but housework is 
not a viable option. When job and business opportunities for men diminish or 
unemployment strikes, and women must take on the role of provider and work 
to support their households, the norms shaping the allocation of time and men’s 
duties do not change. 

Men have more alternatives to “kill time,” a valuable resource that is under 
their control. Women never speak in terms of killing time, most Ukely because 
their job description as homemaker or caregiver, for example, does not end after 
eight hours or at twilight. The prescription means that if women wish or need to 
work outside the home, they may not abandon their "base line” household duties 
and must factor in the time to accomplish them. This female responsibility is 
ingrained to the point that it has become “naturalized”; women’s incessant 
activity is not seen as an unequal burden but as part of the female nature. 
“Women are different. Women like working. Women often keep themselves busy 
because they feel the need to. They do not care about themselves. They may just 
go out to have a chat in their free time. In rural areas like ours, women often keep 
themselves busy all the time, which makes them different from men,” noted a 
woman from rural Vietnam. It is beyond nature—“God has given women the art 
of multi-tasking, so we won’t find anything difficult”—was the view of women 
in Nellore (Andhra Pradesh), India. 

The naturalization or customariness of household work as women-only work 
also arises from the normative refusal by men to engage in home production. 


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This belief (and practice] has been reproduced and solidified over time, 
producing a pattern that is transmitted to the next generations with little change. 
Younger women are accustomed early to household work and stepping into the 
older woman’s place: “When mother is absent, 1 am there to take care of 
everything. Women take care of everything. The man is the household head, 
but the woman takes care of everything” (young woman, Serbia]. 

While education and work opportunities can bring positive chances for female 
autonomy, at the same time, however, they imply a trap that increases women’s 
time burden. The current generation of girls can study and have been freed from 
part of the burden of housework, but not of its totality. Indeed, looking at the 
perceptions of what it means to be a good girl (chapter 1], helping at home is 
still one of the main attributes of a good girl. The appeal of the world beyond the 
confines of the household beckons women, but such aspirations have to take into 
account the need to earn income to support themselves and their families, form 
a family, and run a household, plus manage the expectations of time associated 
with each of them. 

The Rise of the Swedish Husband: An Emerging Male Double-Burden? 

If, in previous generations, the primary defining characteristic of a good 
husband was that he provided for his family, today’s younger generations of 
men and women demand more of the husband, along the lines of the example 
of the Swedish husband.^ Although still essential, bringing home the money is 
no longer enough. Good husbands not only must secure their families’ 
economic well-being but in addition must be sensitive to their wives’ and 
children’s emotional needs, spend time with them at home (instead of out with 
friends, drinking, gambling, or cheating], share domestic chores, and devote 
time to help the children with their homework. If and when men actually do 
all these things, we may see the emergence of a masculine double burden. The 
difference with women’s double burden is a matter of emphasis and time allo¬ 
cation. While women may or may not work, they must in any circumstance 
look after the household; men have little flexibility in the imperative that they 
must provide for the family, but they have more scope in how much time they 
spend nurturing the family. The novelty is the expectation that a man spends 
any time or resources at all in the domestic sphere and that he shares in its 
management with the wife. 

Notice that we are deliberately moving this discussion away from the 
prevalent patterns of time use and household roles in order to learn from 
contexts that feature significant relaxation of or incipient changes in gender 
norms. Adult women and men in Poland and Serbia, especially in urban locations, 
provided eloquent accounts of changes in the norms that define gender roles in 
their communities. Compared with their fathers, whose role as provider was suf¬ 
ficient to quahfy them as good husbands, the partners of the new generation of 
women are expected to “understand the woman’s needs,” “sympathize that I have 
a stomach ache due to my period,” “recognize that we [wife and children] need 
his help,” “realize that I do not feel like cooking and prefer to go to a restaurant,” 


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I am sensitive to my udfe’s affairs. I don’t wake her up in the morning just so 
she can prepare my morning coffee. I wake up to make tea and breakfast, and 
bring it to her because I know that she likes to sleep in the morning and it is 
the best time to sleep. I take care of all the house affairs in the morning because 
she has a right to expect me to do so. When I get home in the evening, she does 
everything to make me happy, so I try to do the same. 

—Urban man, University Quarter, West Bank and Gaza 


“remember the children’s birthdays,” and “remember our anniversary [celebrate 
it] and know how to make the pleasure” (adult women, Dobrowice, Poland). 

In addition to being sensitive, the good husband engages in essential house 
chores. “He cleans the flat, does the basic shopping, cooks” and participates 
actively in the education of the children. Not only “is [he] willing to spend the 
time with the child,” and “participates in family life and helps with the children’s 
homework,” but he has to be good at it. He needs to be “creative while playing 
with children, like a football game,” added the Dobrowice group of Polish 
women. Women in urban Olsztyn, Poland, reported that “now he distinguishes 
the cabbage from the lettuce.” The same definitions of the good husband appear 
in Belgrade, Serbia, where women claimed that, apart from having a “secure 
income ... he divides the household chores with his wife, goes shopping, and is 
resourceful (can take care of himself) and tolerant. He must not be an idiot who 
is not capable of cooking a meal or ironing his clothes.” 

Crucially, these notions are shared by men and reinforce the assumption that 
the bending of norms occurs in a relatively non-conflictive manner in everyday 
interaction. A man from Justynowo, Poland, explained that sometimes “[when] 
my wife comes back from work, her female friends come to visit and she tells 
me to cook dinner by myself” He sees this as fair and does not think his wife 
is behaving as a bad wife. The fact that women and men expressed similar 
views testifies to a shift in what is consensually considered desirable, probably 
as a result of the interactions between education, economic opportunities, and 
messages in the media and other public spaces, where discourses about gender 
circulate. As a quite forward-looking adult male in urban Sjenica, Serbia, 
remarked, “[the good husband must be willing] to serve his wife, to be 
obedient, to make pies, and to wash the dishes.” Simply making this statement 
constitutes a massive shift in the status quo of a community where the good 
husband of the past was “the chief income earner” and “did not help his wife in 
the household.” A strong push for normative change has risen due to the high 
levels of male unemployment in the community and the emergence of oppor¬ 
tunities for women. Men are no longer the sole breadwinners and they have 
had to adapt. 

In Belgrade, Serbia, adult men claimed that a good husband “does not divide 
male and female chores. [A husband and wife] should complement each other 


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and find mutually beneficial solutions.” ‘‘He cannot just sit and watch television 
if the child needs to change clothes and the wife is cooking dinner.” Their good 
husband is a ‘‘good parent, caring, thoughtful.” In Pomoravlje District, Serbia, the 
good husband of the past “used to be undisputed in decision-making: his word 
was final. The wife was to obey, love, even wash his feet.” Now, however, these 
men insisted that the good husband today “washes, irons, helps his wife, even 
vacuums, and usually does the hard physical labor.” 

In a radical departure from tradition, one man from Pomoravlje District 
argued that “if your wife is at home, you have to contribute something. You 
can’t expect her to do everything and you do nothing. You can’t spend your 
time in a pub, you have to help her.” The good husband also “has to have time 
for the children. And this does not mean simply hanging out with them every 
once in a while.” “He has to know what to do to get the children prepared for 
school, even cooking lunch if necessary, if he wants to have children who love 
and respect him. He has to be dedicated to them, not just let them see him 
once in five days.” Other men in the group agreed that household cooperation 
is the ideal. 

While men do not question these additional responsibilities as diminishing 
their masculinity, they have some concern that the balance of power may shift in 
women’s favor in the future: “Men are slightly more dominant now, but women 
may become more dominant soon” (adult man, Pomoravlje District, Serbia). For 
the moment, the extra duties taken on by men do not alter the core of their 
role as breadwinners. As another man in the same group explained, although 
men are expected to do more at home, the “husband still has to provide most 
of the household income. His income is the biggest and the most important for 
the functioning of the household. It gives him self-respect.” When men do not 
feel threatened in their main role as providers, they are more willing to accept 
changes in their secondary, domestic roles. 

In nearby Moldova, we also find evidence of norm relaxation, but it is more 
incipient and appears only in urban contexts. Women in Balti see their good 
husband as someone who “participates actively in his children’s education” and 
“balances his work and family in the same way as a woman does. After work he 
goes home and spends his leisure time with the family.” Men in the same city 
agreed that a good husband “manages to balance work with home responsibilities 
and support his wife”; however, he does so only as long as the traditional associa¬ 
tion between income and self-respect that are central to his idea of masculinity 
remains intact. 

But again in Sjenica, Serbia, increased domestic work by men is a direct result 
of their unemployment and men expressed their frustration. In contrast to 
husbands in the past, “today we are not working and we are unable to provide 
for and make our families happy.” These circumstances may trigger violence, as 
explored more below, but may also produce peaceful accommodation. The 
apparent ease with which these new changes fit into male identity in some 
households and communities indicates the potential for future behavior change. 
The more mainstream these ideas become, the easier it is for young men 


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and boys to follow their fathers as role models and be socialized in more egalitar¬ 
ian gender norms. 

The relaxation and change of norms that shape gender roles is also evident in 
the focus groups in communities where women’s education took of! later and 
where cultural views of women are more traditional. In some sample communi¬ 
ties in India, for example, changes in the economy and educational opportunities 
have spurred new awareness of the need to share responsibilities, particularly in 
urban areas. In urban Bhubaneswar (Odisha), India, adult women’s changed 
expectations for their partners are evident in that they define the good husband 
as someone who “takes responsibility of house,” “takes responsibility of children,” 
“does household work when wife is sick,” and “should work, but also should 
spend quality time with wife and children.” Similarly, in urban .Jaipur (Odisha], 
India, men agreed that the good husband must “take out some time from the day 
to day activity to help the children in studies.” By comparison, in the rural groups 
from India, we find more modest signs of change. But even though small, women 
perceived a difference at the margins of the strict norms that regulate their 
actions: 

There is a difference [from the previous generation]. In those days, the husband 
was treated like a god. TTie wife in my mother’s generation would wait for her 
husband to come home and she would eat her food only after her husband had 
his dinner. These days, the wife doesn’t wait for her husband, but after he wakes 
her up, she serves dinner to him. (Village women, Koudipally Mandal, Andhra 
Pradesh, India) 

Sisum’s story, which opens chapter 1, makes clear the differences between 
urban Thimphu and rural Samtse. In the countryside, the central characteristic 
of the husband as the provider of the family remains, but men now seem more 
open-minded about the restrictions that some traditional norms impose on 
women. Radical change in gender roles across all countries and communities 
is still far away, but the emergence of more progressive views of men’s contri¬ 
bution to housework mean, at least, greater visibility of the double demands 
upon women. Men are also challenging the dictate of staying removed from 
reproductive tasks demanded by traditional masculinity. Becoming more 
involved in the lives of their children arises, one assumes, not only from a 
sense of duty but from the pleasures and rewards associated with it. Still, men 
are “helping,” rather than taking responsibility for household chores or 
children’s education. 

Open Dialogue and Emergence of Household Power Sharing 

The notion of cooperation in household discussions—open dialogue—is requisite 
to the success of a couple, and central in the view of a Vietnamese man from 
Hung Yen District, who said, “Husband and wife should discuss [an issue] and 
come to the same decision. The spousal relationship should be equal. For 
instance, they have to discuss and agree on buying a television or not. A decision 
made without their [mutual] agreement is seldom successful.” In Kim Dong 


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District, Vietnam, an adult woman described her belief about domestic balance 
of power: 

In my opinion, balance of power means each partner is free to share their ideas in 
the couple’s discussion before a decision is made. It is similar to a couple [reaching] 
consensus. If for example, the husband takes the lead of the family and his wife and 
children have to ask him for money to buy everything, his wife and children have 
no share of the power. 

Although not abundant, evidence in this study of peaceful routine negotiations, 
daily conversations, and transactions between spouses or partners offers glimpses 
of groundbreaking changes in household cooperation, open dialogue, and even 
power sharing. Dialogue and harmonious relations have an instrumental, benefi¬ 
cial value, not only for family life but also for economic decision-making within 
the household [see, for example, Aizer 2010; Panda and Agarwal 2005; Pronyk 
et al 2006; Swaminathan, Walker, and Rugadya 2008; and World Bank 2012], 
From Fiji to Moldova to India, the possibility of partners being able to express 
different opinions without conflict—open dialogue—is significant progress as 
gender norms bend and change. Its presence is mnemonic for contemporary 
visions of a “good” couple and the emerging equality between women and men. 

Notably, the task of initiating more open dialogue is placed on men. It is both 
seemingly contradictory and expected, given that men are the main power 
holders and traditional leaders of the household. For example, women in rural 
Kalahandi District (Andhra Pradesh], India, felt that it is a good husband’s duty 
to “consult his wife for decisions made in the family and discuss household issues 
with women.” Numerous examples in the data show that women observed 
positive changes in their husbands and new spaces opened up for negotiation and 
dialogue—where husbands consulted their wives, permitted conversations to 
take place around family decisions, did not make decisions alone, and were open 
to dissenting views. Given that men are the main power holders and expected 
household leaders, the creation of more space for dialogue is in their hands. 

A comment from a man in rural Zabibu Village, Tanzania, underlines this 
shift—by men—in domestic power relations as a result of more open dialogue 
between men and women: “For me, I think that if you want to remain powerful, 
you must collaborate with people. You must also listen a lot, especially to your 
wife, because sometimes women have good ideas.” Ffis further comment is even 
more revealing: “Look at ‘H.’ He was educated and had money, but he quarreled 
with his wife. And what happened? When he abandoned his wife, he married 
another one who simply ate his money, so where is he now? At the bottom [of 
the power ladder].” 

Dialogue has an important normative component to it—meaning that both 
men and women adhere to it as a matter of principle. But it is illuminating if one 
also considers that, when women have their own income,® their capacity to 
engage men in negotiation greatly increases. Income gives women bargaining 
power, as the younger women in the study particularly are discovering and 
exploring. In addition, due to their gains in education and public engagement. 


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the young women have also become more aware of their rights and are 
developing different expectations of their relationships with men. Informed, 
connected, and aspiring women with some income of their own are likely to 
demand more open dialogue in their households, but they also have more 
resources to prevail in some decisions or reach agreement with their husbands or 
partners. However, as we discuss later in chapter 5, norms do not always change 
with women’s economic independence. 

Intergenerational Transmission of the Possibility of Change 

Perhaps the final quiet mechanism that ensures movement toward more equal 
gender norms is the infusion of this aspiration into the next generation’s ideals. 
The “capacity to aspire’’ is the first step toward change [Appadurai 2004]. When 
prompted about their hopes for their children’s futures, the parents in the 
sample agreed that they wished for them a good education and work opportuni¬ 
ties. Both are tools that increase their agency, fuel their drive to seek a better life, 
and teach them to make sound choices. Education and economic well-being 
dominated the discussions on aspirations for sons and daughters alike. 

The parents’ narratives display a diverse set of aspirations, ranging from spe¬ 
cific changes in gender norms [daughters do not have to obey their husbands 
unquestioningly or will not be abused], gender relationships [open dialogue and 
more equality], and the traditional practices that are detrimental to women, to 
positive character traits [be more decisive and stronger]. We find these in urban 
and rural communities, but significantly, they appear mostly in adult women’s 
aspirations for girls and younger women. This is crucial, given the central role of 
women in the socialization of children in family norms and their potential roles 
as agents of change. 

The hope of women that their daughters can develop stronger personalities, 
learn from their mothers’ mistakes, and take better charge of their lives appears 
across the sample. Notably, in countries like Burkina Faso, the very suggestion 
that young girls be more alert and seek different life paths from their mothers 
constitutes a significant departure from tradition and a shift in the norms that 
link good life choices today with those of the previous generations. Mothers in 
Burkina Faso described the development of more courageous, less passive person¬ 
alities and a reflective or critical attitude as a desire for their daughters: “They 
must fight more for themselves and be more daring.” In East Sepik Province, 
Papua New Guinea, women wanted to teach their daughters from their own 
experiences and help their daughters avoid making the same mistakes that lim¬ 
ited their own life choices, “[like] those girls who got pregnant early and missed 
out on opportunities.” 

Mothers’ hopes for positive character traits in their daughters applied to their 
sons as well, although they typically spoke of sons avoiding bad behavior. For 
instance, an adult woman in Chiclayo, Peru, wished her son would “continue 
working, be as responsible at home as he is with his two sons, and not fall into 
alcoholism or a life of vice.” If her aspirations for her son are successful. 


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[A woman] knows the traditions and picks what is important and tries to 
transmit what she thinks is good for kids now. 

—Village woman, Malangachilima village, Tanzania 


this mother will have bucked a set of attitudes that in Peru, as in many other 
countries, have defined masculinity for a long time. 

In Thimphu, Bhutan, mothers’ aspirations for their sons include a more direct 
reference to gender equality: “Equality for both would make the biggest 
difference in the lives of our daughters and would imbue our sons with the 
understanding that all humans of opposite gender are same.” These women 
“would love to see their girl and boy children take equal stand in all sectors, 
where girls will not be the underprivileged gender.” Just as with their daughters, 
mothers socialize their sons and can also be key agents for change in their son’s 
attitudes and behaviors. The willingness of mothers and fathers to embrace 
gender equality in their children’s education may bring massive change and make 
gender relations in the next generation more equitable and harmonious. 

As gender norms loosen, today’s young women are less content to recreate the 
family dynamics of their mothers. When the young adult women in the sample 
were asked if they wished to lead lives similar to their mothers, they responded 
consistently that they wanted to be more proactive, less tolerant of abuse, and 
more informed. For example, in an urban area of Hato Mayor Province, the 
Dominican Republic, one young woman asserted that she did not want to 
be “passive in her life” like her mother. Another urban young woman, in Nsenene 
village, Tanzania, disapproved of her mother’s tolerance of her father’s violent 
behavior: “She does not say anything to my father who beats her up.” 
In Bhubaneswar (Odisha], India, young women rejected their mother’s 
“innocence” and ignorance: “[The women] never came out of their houses, 
so they did not even know what was happening outside.” 

Further signs of change are appearing in the norms that surround marriage. 
A group of mothers, also in Bhubaneswar, had revolutionary hopes for their 
daughters: “[We wish] them to find a good life partner. If they marry by their 
own choice, then the boy can be of a caste lower than theirs.” This aspiration that 
their daughters have a choice in marriage not only significantly challenges a 
powerful traditional gender norm but also breaks a status-related norm. 

Mothers also pass along traditions to their daughters in order to safeguard 
their reputations, ensure proper marriages, and preserve family honor in 
compliance with gender norms. When asked about her desires for her child s 
future, a mother from Sumadija District, Serbia, declared, “She should be able to 
go out during the day, but not during the night. And she must get an education, 
otherwise she will have no chance of finding a good job.” Fike any mother, she 
wanted what is best for her children, even if some of her wishes still limit her 
daughter's freedoms and reinforce gender inequalities.^ 

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Mothers in our study also wanted to spare their daughters from physically 
harmful traditional practices. For example, rural women in Burkina Faso and 
Tanzania opposed having their daughters undergo the traditional ritual of female 
genital cutting.^ These mothers expressly talked about the harm to their 
daughters and that they did not want them “circumcised, so they can give birth 
more easily.” One mother in Malangachilima village, Tanzania, was particularly 
eloquent about the negative impact of the practice and the need for change: 

I hope one thing happens to this community. We used to have a reality of circumcis¬ 
ing girls. Many organizations came and sensitized the society about how bad it was 
and the situation seemed to improve. I have one request for my fellow women: let 
us be honest with ourselves and our daughters if we love them. There are still some 
women who are still doing this to their daughters when they are very young and it 
cannot be noticed easily. We take our children to visit their aunties, but that [genital 
cutting] is what we go to do. Let us try to convince each other to completely stop it. 

We are not telling anybody lies, except ourselves; our daughter will blame us and 
we shall feel ashamed at some point. 


Gender Norms in Transition 

In order to learn more about processes of norm change, we cast a spotlight above 
on evidence in the dataset where this is more pronounced. The transition to new 
and more equitable gender roles and relations is not linear: old and new co-exist. 
Advances toward more equitable norms on some fronts may not be matched by 
progress on others. Gains may sometimes be reversed. Actual behaviors may 
deviate from changing ideals and aspirations. And, perhaps to be expected, focus 
group members often disagreed among themselves about the nature of norma¬ 
tive changes occurring in their households and communities. This muddled story 
on norm changes, moreover, emerges in almost every context we sampled. 
On balance, change is surely happening, but at the local level it is often patchy, 
gradual, and difficult to discern. (Also see box 2.1.] 

For example, an earlier quotation by the women of Koudipally Mandal 
(Andhra Pradesh],^ India, described how a new dinner rule has taken root, which 
no longer requires them to wait to eat until after the men have finished. This is 
also a community, however, where female seclusion is practiced and violence 
against women remains high and generally acceptable. Women there “should not 
go out, even if the husband scolds or beats her. She should adjust.” Over and over 
again, the data show that, although some norms do relax, other significantly 
inequitable norms persist. vMso, it is not only in more traditional contexts that 
overtly coercive forces uphold gender hierarchies. Urban Dobrowice, Poland, is 
another community (quoted earlier] where husbands are engaging meaningfully 
in household work and family care.'® Yet, the Koudipally Mandal and Dobrowice 
focus groups reported that domestic violence occurs there regularly. (Koudipally 
Mandal and Dobrowice are outliers on the continuum of domestic violence of all 
focus groups, with greater levels than most.] The point here is simply that. 


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In the past, everyone knew which roles belonged to men and which roles 
belonged to women. Today you do not know which role belongs to whom. 

—Urban woman, Belgrade, Serbia 


Box 2.1 Co-Existence of Norms and Support for Women's Work Outside the Home 
in Islamic Communities 

No causal connection has been shown between low numbers of women in the labor force and 
Islam's religious beliefs and ideals. Islam is, arguably, no more gender biased^ than Judaism 
and Christianity. Other factors, such as geography, culture, and history—more so than 
religion—are more responsible for fewer women working, for example, in the Middle East and 
North Africa (Rauch and Kostyshak 2009; World Bank 2012). In fact, female labor varies widely 
across the Arab world, from lower levels in the West Bank and Gaza to much higher ones in 
Indonesia. Indeed, in Offenhauer's (2005) extensive review, these different labor rates for 
women reflect variations in national economic structures and strategies or in local pre-existing 
cultural values. 

The evidence from the countries in our sample is similar, which shows no single standard or 
norm for women's domestic and breadwinner roles or for working mothers.*^ For example, 
normative restrictions are more intense in Afghanistan, Sudan, and the Republic of Yemen, 
although there are signs of normative change in West Bank and Gaza and open support for 
women's work autonomy in Indonesia, especially among young adults. While the communi¬ 
ties in these five countries adhere to women's "natural" role as the guardian of domestic order 
(or "original duty/'" as pointed out by a Sudanese Muslim man), these views do not differ from 
other sample countries where different religions are practiced. 

The norms, which underlie whether women can work, frame women's decisions about jobs 
in terms of compatibility with household duties and supplemental income to what the man 
earns."They [men] deal with women's work as a necessity, but if their living conditions improve, 
then women should stay home and not do any kind of work" (young man, Sudan). In the 
Republic of Yemen, Muslim men generally felt the same way, given that "most of the available 
jobs for women interfere with their family care obligations. Women's work for pay gets in 
the way of their original (traditional) duties" (young man, Aden, the Republic of Yemen). But the 
economic struggles faced by Yemeni households are forcing gender norms to slacken to 
the point that men now expect their wives to contribute to the family income. 

Notably, these views co-exist with other attitudes that see no problem with women work¬ 
ing. These positive views may develop from exposure to other realities, more education, 
or economic hardship. In a rural village in Afghanistan, adult men explained that "before, 
mothers could not work out of home, but now they can because they have more education 
and are exposed to the opinions of other women—who immigrated when war erupted—that 
women can work." Urban young women in Afghanistan also sought to work as a logical 


box continues next page 


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Box 2.1 Co-Existence of Norms and Support for Women's Work Outside the Home in Islamic 
Communities (continued) 

consequence of their education: "It is better for women to go out to work, but if her family does 
not agree, it is better to stay at home.... But if the family sends the girls to school, then they 
must accept that the girls will work and earn an income." 

In Indonesia, although the adult women were more compliant with traditional norms that 
dictate that they must consult their husbands before working outside the home, educated 
young Muslim women living in cities expressed strong opinions about their right to work and 
to be independent. This does not mean, however, that they do not face the same normative 
limitations as their mothers, but that they are willing to fight them. "In the past, the girls were 
not allowed to go out or even go to school, but the current situation has changed. I have a 
sister who is studying and will work for sure," pointed out a young man from Dirbas, West Bank 
and Gaza. 

Overall, the situation in Islamic countries is not substantially different from other countries. 
Changes in views and practices are slower and uneven, but the normative frameworks in 
Muslim communities are clearly adapting to the new aspirations and realities of the women 
and men living there. 

a. The positions on women held by very conservative or extreme proponents of Islam (whose aggressive actions have 
dominated media headlines in recent years) do not reflect what Islam actually says about women and their roles and 
activities. 

b. Similar variation in norms is reported for Bangladesh in World Bank (2008). This study finds, for example, more support for 
gender equality in education, but it does not translate into views that husbands and wives should have equal education. 

c. “Original duty' is the view in Islam. 


under diverse conditions, new and old norms can exist together in the same 
households and communities. [Also see box Pl.l.) 

In many rural men’s focus groups, particularly, it was not uncommon for 
members to express open dissatisfaction that women are gaining a stronger and 
more independent voice. The men of Hung Yen District, Vietnam, as noted 
earUer, mostly lauded consultative decision-making processes between couples as 
key to making better choices. Still, others in this group cautioned against women 
gaining too much power and freedom because “you can kill yourself’ or “living 
that way, you are considered self-indulgent.’’ One man added. 

Local women are supposed to meet four attributes of an ideal woman: industry, 
appearance, respectful speech, and proper behavior. Therefore, it is not good for 
wives or mothers to have much freedom. Tlie image of a man who gambles and 
drinks alcohol has been around for ages. A woman should enjoy freedom only 
within a certain scope. 

The women’s group from Hung Yen District disagreed among themselves 
whether it is good for women to have extensive freedom, although they too 
valued more open dialogue among couples, now generally accepted. Gender 
differences in status and acceptable behaviors are narrowing, but views can vary 
greatly, even among peers of the same sex and same generation, over how much 
normative change is taking hold and is even desirable. 


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Moreover, although we often heard reports of better communication among 
couples, the discourse described as beneficial by both men and women did not 
necessarily involve a full and fair consideration of one another’s views. As is 
evident from the data, women frequently tended to concede or compromise in 
order to avoid disrupting family harmony or to protect the husband’s feelings, 
or out of concern for the welfare of the children and their own physical well¬ 
being. So, in many cases, there is dialogue, but often women pull out of the 
conversation before it even starts. 

For example, one woman from Sungai Puar District, Indonesia, explained that 
“generally, the wife is more patient due to family considerations. Maybe, because 
the children are still little, she will let things be for a while.” In Zabibu Village, 
Tanzania, where there is plenty of evidence of increases in women’s autonomy, 
one adult woman thought that “good couples simply have wives who are 
submissive to the husbands. Couples where women are emancipated have family 
problems because the husband and the wife will always be in endless discussions 
and quarrels.” One way for a wife to avoid these quarrels, according to women in 
Kalahandi District (Andhra Pradesh], India, is when “consulted by her husband 
... she agrees to what he says.” 

Consideration for the husband’s feelings or reputation continues to be a 
prominent factor that prevents women in the study from pursuing their ideas or 
projects. As discussed in the next chapter on key decision-making processes, 
women do not always succeed in negotiations or in bringing about dialogue. This 
situation may be changing in the new generation for whom the norms are no 
longer sacred. An intergenerational dialogue between two women in Levuka, Fiji, 
made this evident. The older woman (in her 50s] asserted that “a good wife will 
not try to outdo her husband. Even if she is working, and he is not, she will still 
treat him as if he were the head of the household. She will not belittle him.” 
The younger woman (in her 20s] argued that “maybe in the past it was like that, 
but my husband helps me wash clothes and cook food, so I think it is all right to 
be a good wife and ask your husband to help in the house.” 

Even one of the most progressive communities in the sample, urban Olztsyn, 
Poland, produced diverging views on the qualities of a good wife. One woman 
opined that a good wife should be very attentive to her husband’s needs: 
“She doesn’t sleep at night” if required to manage her work load, and “doesn’t 
talk back.” But other women in her group disagreed, arguing for a more give- 
and-take relationship and that a woman needs to “motivate her husband to 
help her.” Mixed signs of progress were also evident in other exchanges in this 
group. As one woman indicated, her son-in-law “creates partnership in his 
marriage; he and his wife go shopping together, he always makes the bed, and 
he cleans up after himself My husband doesn’t.” Another woman countered, 
“My son-in-law just does the opposite: he does not help my daughter, like my 
husband. He claims that he works very hard and deserves to rest—he has been 
brought up this way.” 

If some women in the study seemingly gave up in the process of negotiation, 
others adopted strategic responses to unequal power distributions and pretended 


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to comply with the norm. They either included the husband perfunctorily: 
“You see, if you are not careful with men, you can lose it all. So you need to make 
sure that you involve them, so they feel involved, and then you can continue 
with the business” (woman in Tanzania]—or they simply acted as if they followed 
the rules, but then did what they wanted when their husbands were not present 
or did not notice. 

In a few cases, focus groups reported trends that suggested backsliding on 
normative gender conduct. In some sample communities in Liberia, women 
perceived they had made significant strides in gender equality. They felt that they 
are clearly gaining more powerful public roles, but they also expressed frustration 
that their partners are becoming less cooperative. “The men refuse to cut palm 
nuts and brush on the farm, so we now have to do it,” complained a woman from 
Greenville District. Throughout Liberia, men are simultaneously struggling to 
adapt to women’s new roles and dealing with the slow recovery of the economy 
after the end of the civil conflict in 2003. Unfortunately, in some cases, women’s 
economic participation can fuel violence by men against them. Women’s 
empowerment and gender norm change do not always move amicably together. 

"A Woman Should Be Beaten if She Deserves Punishment" 

In this section, we present men’s and women’s accounts of domestic conflict and 
violence in their communities. Facilitators introduced the topic by asking the 
focus groups to reflect on what typically happens in their communities when a 
wife is not a good wife or a husband is not a good husband. Their responses make 
evident that domestic violence is all too common, albeit at varying levels across 
the sample. Economic factors are perceived to be a principal trigger, but focus 
group narratives revealed that slowly changing norms for acceptable roles and 
conduct also contribute to violence and the forms that it takes. The focus groups’ 
narratives consistently reported that men who are unable to fulfill their provider 
role often act out their frustrations with violence, and that it remains acceptable 
in many communities to sanction women harshly for minor infractions that are 
perceived as challenging male authority or norms of feminine conduct. 

In general, private interviews rather than group discussions are preferable 
when investigating questions of intimate partner stress and violence. (We included 
both in the study.] Nevertheless, the focus group discussions still painted a rough 
picture of what is deemed “normal” or perhaps “acceptable” in conversation 
about this sensitive topic among friends and neighbors. A large majority of the 
adult focus groups spoke in some detail on this difficult subject.’' 

The gender literature varies in its emphasis on more- versus less-coercive 
mechanisms that make gender norms difficult to dislodge. Actual or credible 
threats of violence are the most extreme, costly, and risky of the mechanisms that 
sustain gender inequalities and enforce gender norm compliance. Much more 
potent and effective, however, are the everyday routine interactions and internal¬ 
ized psychological processes that sustain gender hierarchies, as well as other 
social inequalities, with less disruption.As discussed in the introduction, norms 


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Does a good husband have to he good provider? [Facilitator) 

Yes, that is the main reason why he is the head of the family. You know, if he 
doesn’t do that people ivill make jokes about him. 

—Village man, Blue Nile State, Sudan 

If she is nagging me and I tell her to stop, and she continues nagging, then it is 
her fault and she deserves to he beaten. 

—Urban man, Belgrade, Serbia 


carry with them a set of socially acceptable sanctions that may be invoked in 
instances of deviation from the norm. These acts of sanction are part and parcel 
of the common, acceptable conduct of household members. In addition, norms 
are held in place by deeply internalized beliefs about men’s greater authority and 
competency [Ridgeway and Correll 2004). Foucault [1995), for example, argues 
that social control most often works through internalization, self-discipline, and 
vigilance rather than external coercive mechanisms that inflict pain. 

In their rethinking of the notion of “hegemonic masculinity,” Connell and 
Messerschmidt [2005, 842) stress the less-passive ways in which men use 
language to meet their “interactional needs” and favorably “position themselves 
through discursive practices.” They also reflect on ways that “boys and men 
choose those discursive positions that help them ward off' anxiety and avoid 
feelings of powerlessness.” These discursive acts to reaffirm men’s dominant 
position are widely evident in the focus group accounts about marital strife. Their 
narratives pointed to causes of domestic violence as men’s affirmation of their 
dominant role and response when it appears to be challenged. Other studies also 
suggest that men’s peers play important roles in upholding gender norms of 
masculinity, dominance, and aggressive behavior: peer pressure on men pushes 
them to earn respect and demonstrate their competency by subordinating 
woman [see, for instance, Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Sharpe 1998). These 
demands on men to secure and display control greatly complicate women’s 
agency and pursuit of goals that require resisting or relaxing the gender norms 
that govern their roles and responsibilities. They also complicate women’s power 
to compel their partners to uphold their prescribed roles and responsibilities— 
for example, to insist that their husbands behave respectfully, be good decision¬ 
makers, and provide for their families. 

Extent and Forms of Domestic Violence 

Sisum’s questioning, in the opening of part I, of a dinner rule that sparked a wild 
tirade by her father, was not at all unusual in our focus groups’ accounts of the 
normative behaviors that surround marital stress. While for some participants— 
mostly women—the outburst itself could qualify as an act of violence, this view 
was not shared by most men. The men’s focus group from Samtse, Bhutan 

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(Sisum’s village], reported domestic violence as a rare event in their community, 
although the women rated it as occurring regularly. This discrepancy may arise 
because these men do not perceive displays of rage or overt threats of violence 
toward women as domestic violence, while the women register the physical 
intimidation or the knowledge that such rage often precedes violence. 

Both women and men in the study often pointed out, in very different 
contexts, that seemingly minor actions by the female could spark explosive reac¬ 
tions from the male authority figure, which were wholly disproportionate to the 
immediate circumstances. Many focus groups indicated that a wife may be 
harshly scolded, or even beaten, should she “not be pleasant,” talk about “small 
matters,” “gossip,” or serve a meal that is “not tasty” or “late.” Men in diverse 
communities mentioned chiding or sternly reprimanding women for triggering 
conflict with their “useless talking and interference.” In Pomoravlje District, 
Serbia, a man referred to women as “sharp-tongued; they are masters of mental 
abuse, they nag, they harass, they badger.” In Ceadir-Lunga, Moldova, another 
man warned, 

for example, if a friend of mine comes to visit me—not the family—then my wife 
should pour the wine into our glasses. She may also drink a glass, but immediately 
after she has to leave the room. God save her if she starts chatting, making 
comments, or judging someone or something. 

Yet, in the study, for women to punish or belittle a man for these same 
“misbehaviors” is generally unthinkable and unacceptable. In addition, a woman 
is expected to discipline herself^ and if she fails—for example, by not holding her 
tongue—then she may be harmed or abused as a consequence. Focus groups 
reported that a woman who is a victim of abuse may be advised by her parents, 
friends, in-laws, and neighbors of her duty to accept the shame and mistreatment 
for provoking her husband. In Ba Dinh District, Vietnam, for instance, the men’s 
group noted, “Neighbors will give advice to the wife, something like ‘your 
husband has a hot temper, so you should find a better time to talk with him. Try 
not to complain too much.’” Such are the stark realities of the unfair sanctioning 
practices that govern daily life and the unlevel playing field of marital conflict. 

Figure 2.1 reveals that on average focus groups perceived domestic violence 
to be occasional events in their communities, although significantly 31 percent 
of women’s groups thought domestic violence was a regular or frequent occur¬ 
rence in their communities versus 19 percent of men's groups. Rural men 
acknowledged the least amount of domestic violence. Focus groups on balance 
indicated, however, that such violence is ebbing, compared to a decade ago. 
While these perceptions of how much domestic violence occurs are not derived 
from representative samples, they do signal that violence remains a serious threat 
and challenge. And given the shame and stigma associated with family conflict, 
the discourse among focus group members likely understates the extent and 
severity of marital stress and domestic violence. 

The averages in figure 2.1 hide significant variations. At one extreme are the 
sample communities that both women and men deem to be very safe and. 


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Figure 2.1 Perceptions of the Prevalence of Domestic Violence against Women in the Study 
Communities 



Note: The figure shows the average of ratings by focus group members in 194 adult focus groups. The ratings were done 
privately by individuals during the focus groups, and then the general pattern of response was discussed. Happens; 

1 = almost never; 2 = occasionally; 3 = regularly; 4 = frequently. 


Figure 2.2 Reports of Forms of Domestic Abuse against Women 



Frequency of mentions 

■ Physical abuse ■ Economic abuse 

■ Verbal abuse ^ Emotional abuse 


Note: Data from 194 adult focus groups. 


at the other, are those where the respondents’ reports echoed this man from 
Koudipally Mandal (Andhra Pradesh), India: “The women are not physically 
abused as frequently as they used to be. Of course, around 40 percent are still 
being abused physically. The reasons are mainly related to earnings.” The large 
variation in local levels of violence is consistent with the findings of randomized 
surveys of domestic violence (Heise 2011). 

Figure 2.2 presents a snapshot of the most common abuses mentioned in the 
focus groups’ descriptions of marital conflict. Most often, and by quite a large 
margin, their comments centered on men's acts of physical violence against 
women, which was mentioned more than other types of abuse. This pattern 
emerged despite the facilitators’ explanations to the groups of our interest in 
learning about all forms of violence common among couples in the community. 

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whether verbal, emotional, economic (deprivation), or physical. Still, male-on- 
female physical abuse dominated the discussions, usually reported with single¬ 
word descriptions of violence, such as slapping, punching, hitting, bashing, or 
raping. Sometimes the participants were more specific: hitting with a broom, 
pulling hair, breaking arms and legs, being denied food, forcing sex, using knives, 
or being left outside at night. 

Facilitators had the option of aiding the discussions about marital conflict by 
drawing a cause-impact diagram and jotting down the main comments from the 
group about the different causes, forms, and impacts of abuse. Figure 2.3 displays 
the diagram from a women’s focus group in a densely populated neighborhood 
of Ba Dinh District in Hanoi. The diagram shows more detail in the forms of 
abuse, but otherwise is typical of other diagrams generated by the focus groups. 
Both men’s and women’s groups from the Hanoi neighborhood reported 
declining levels of violence, although the women’s diagram indicates quite 
diverse forms of violence. The diagram also highlights how expected behaviors 
and gender roles are at the center of the causes, as well as in the types, of violence. 
For example, such practices as making all the decisions or not allowing a wife to 
go out are nothing but a tightening of some norms already in existence. The 
Hanoi women also listed many good reasons why a woman would hide being 
abused, including neighborhood gossip, public shame, the stigma attached to 
herself and her family, and high risk of further beatings. 


Figure 2.3 Causes and Consequences of Violence, Women's Focus Group in Ba Dinh District of 
Hanoi, Vietnam 



Divorce or 
separated 


Family 

unhappy 


Children are 
affected 
psychologically 


Husband 
drunk; wife 
suspects 
adultery 


~ Family finances ^ 
fall; 

unemployment; 
wife does not give 
husband money 
L for drink > 


Causes 


Forms of abuse 


Consequences of 
abuse 


Husband scolds, 
humiliates wife; wife 
scolds husband; husband 
prohibits his wife from 
going out; husband 
controls wife's time and 
money. No respect. 
Husband dominates all 
decision-making in the 
house. Husband beats, 
slaps, punches, abuses 
wife. Sexual violence. 


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Women from this neighborhood of Hanoi conceded that they “scolded their 
husbands,” and many focus groups of both sexes reported that women also can 
be emotionally and verbally abusive. Yet, the greatest preponderance of violence 
described was men’s physical abuse of women. This passage from a 37-year-old 
man from the neighborhood captured this pattern: 

In our district, there are cases where men beat women and women mentally terror¬ 
ize men. Because they have different points of view on some problem, men and 
women argue with each other. Men do not talk about rights because men and 
women are equal. Men are stronger and in a dispute, when a man finds it difficult 
to control his anger, he may use his hand to punch or slap his woman. For the 
woman, because of the pressure to care for the family, it is easy for her to get angry. 
Women tend to have this habit of complaining to the husband when he comes back 
home late. It is meant to terrorize men psychologically. 

Well beyond Hanoi, other men’s groups viewed a wife’s “banter,” “sulking,” 
“grumbling,” or “complaining” as “mental torture” that merited the harshest 
discipline. In Hato Mayor, the Dominican Republic, the men listed one reason for 
violence as “women at times put a lot of pressure on them.” In Balti, Moldova, 
urban men said that violence can happen “because the wife couldn’t stop from 
making caustic comments about some mistakes her husband made.” Clearly, 
deeper stresses are driving these processes. 

Causes and Consequences of Domestic Violence 

Perhaps to be expected, economic factors, such as poverty, joblessness, hunger, 
and financial problems and mismanagement, emerged most often as causes of 
domestic violence (figure 2.4). The narratives revealed, moreover, that many 
times these fights are not just about economic hardship. Men may also become 
belligerent because they feel they need to reassert or maintain their dominance, 
because they have lost the provider status or ability that underpins their power 
in the home, or because their partners are gaining economic independence.'^ 

Figure 2.4 Perceptions of Reasons for Domestic Violence 

Economic hardship 
Marital conflict 
Alcohol, drugs, or gambling problems 
Challenging male authority 
Unfaithfulness 
Household responsibilities 

0 20 40 60 80 100 

Frequency of mentions 

■ Men ■ Women 



Note: Data from 194 adult focus groups. 


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This interchange from a men’s group in Martynice, Poland, displays the tight 
links between money and power: 

Women are more often smart alecks [about money]. 

The money issue is not settled. Most of the disagreements [in a marriage] are con¬ 
nected to money. 

The wife asks, “Why are you earning so and so? Couldn’t you find a better job? How 
am I supposed to live on this money?” And if she’s making more, that’s even worse. 
She says, “What do I need you for?” 

If the wife is making more than the husband, it’s over. She asks, "How come I can 
make such and such amount and you can’t?” 

In many of the contexts of economic stress on couples in this sample, men are 
struggling with joblessness and underemployment. Some women also reported 
that violent abuse by husbands may stem from the women taking out loans, 
being unable to repay debts, or refusing to get additional loans on behalf of 
their husbands. Men’s acute frustration in their inability to provide is well rec¬ 
ognized as fueling anti-social behaviors. Both women’s and men’s groups gave 
numerous accounts of men suffering emotionally [when under- or unem¬ 
ployed] and either withdrawing or lashing out in violence, while at the same 
time they may be squandering scarce assets on drinking, gambling, or other 
women. Yet, it is the woman—the traditional household and budget manager— 
who may be terribly scolded or even beaten for raising questions about running 
the household “on air.” A woman from Velugodu [Andhra Pradesh), India, 
explained, 

if the husband comes home drunk, then the wife bursts out at him because she 
is suffering equally, or more than he is, due to their financial problems. Then the 
husband becomes angry and beats her. It is very common for him to beat 
the wife. The wife and the children watching start crying and finally after some 
time they sleep. 

Rather than poverty alone, which certainly complicates a good wife’s household 
role, men’s insecurity in their ability to lead or provide, for whatever reasons, 
underlie many domestic clashes. 

Marital conflict [understood as disagreements in the way the marital relation¬ 
ship is being conducted) is another major trigger in figure 2.4 and is perceived 
variously to be a cause, form, and effect of violence. Focus groups described mari¬ 
tal conflict with terms such as disrespect, jealousy, lack of trust, miscommunica- 
tion, misunderstanding, personal differences, and too much stress. Among the 
four adult groups, urban men had by far the most to say about the triggers of 
violence in general, mentioning poor marital relations the most. 

Current theories of domestic violence attribute it to an “interplay among 
personal, situational, and socio-cultural factors” [Crowell and Burgess [1996] in 
Heise [2011 ], 7), rather than just one factor. Men resort to violent behavior as a 
tactic for asserting and demonstrating their manhood and their power 


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and control over women when they feel their position is threatened (Connell and 
Messerschmidt 2005], In the urban focus groups, in particular, both men and 
women marked the stressful conditions for households and communities brought 
on by higher costs of city living and more unemployed or underemployed men. 
In response, women are stepping up their economic role and, as a result, may be 
expecting more authority and cooperation. 

Focus groups from a bustling peri-urban neighborhood of Hyderabad 
(Andhra Pradesh), India, perceived that domestic violence was intensifying due 
to these forces. The women from Hyderabad reported that, although tension 
between couples often has economic roots, any trifling reason—real or 
imagined—that men perceived as defying their authority (or altering women’s 
prescribed conduct) may ignite violence: 

Even if the husband is not drunk, there may be quarrels at home for different 
reasons. When the household faces financial crisis, he thinks that any talk about 
finances points to his failure. The wife cannot avoid talking about the lack of money 
because basic needs, like food, school fees, rent, or medicines cannot be ignored. She 
becomes an “irritant” when she lists what they must have, so he starts fighting. 

He may take anything as a pretext to show his anger and then he beats her. 
Sometimes he starts a fight over whether the food is not tasty or is too salty. 

The Hyderabad men’s accounts of violence were surprisingly similar to the 
women’s. They concurred that “lack of money” was a principal factor, that “men 
abuse women at the slightest pretext,” and that “when abuses fly thick and fast, 
the man storms out to have a drink.” Men expressed awareness of women’s rights, 
but they clearly felt that women invited the violence and, hence, it was implicitly 
justified: “The fights carry on for a longer time and sometimes the women 
succumb to pressure and agree that they were wrong.” 

Although norms for gender roles are clearly relaxing in this Hyderabad neigh¬ 
borhood, the process seems to be fraught with stress for many households. 
Domestic Ufe is changing and many women now work for pay, but the community 
continues to value and award prestige to couples who play their traditional roles. 
Earlier in the focus group discussion, before the topic of marital conflict was 
introduced, a man lamented about the change in local women’s attitudes and 
behaviors: “They want power. They want jewelry. They always want more and 
they are highly demanding. ...They always want more.”The men also expressed 
exasperation with women who get together “to compare jewelry and tales of 
beatings.” The men favorably recalled the wives of their father’s generations who 
were “good” and “sacrificing,” unlike today’s wives who “[cjould not give time to 
children and family,” made “no sacrifices,” and “asked for rights.” For their part, 
women were happier with the changes in gender roles and reported that men are 
better now at showing their love for their children. The women cautioned, how¬ 
ever, that a good wife should not pick fights with her husband for “silly reasons.” 

Indeed, women in many communities conceded they also played a part in 
marital conflict. Women in a neighborhood of Rafa Governorate in Gaza said 
they were less submissive than in the past and that violence sometimes happened 

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because “often she just doesn’t obey him as a way of abusing him.” Scott (1985] 
usefully classifies tactics that involve resisting submission as the “weapons of the 
weak,” and draws on the wider literature to show how acts of insubordination and 
evasion of responsibilities are common strategies among powerless groups 
struggling for recognition and influence, and how powerful groups will frequently 
go to great lengths to keep these behaviors in check in order to prevent them 
escalating to more costly cycles of resistance and reaction. Agarwal (1997, 18) 
similarly argues that “persistent complaining, pleading ill-health ... withdrawing 
into silence, and withholding sex are all means by which women are known to 
bargain within the family.” The women’s group in Ba’adan center, the Republic 
of Yemen, for instance, agreed that “lack of money and the husband’s income are 
some of the most important causes of fights between a couple, as much as when 
the husband is jobless and sitting at home. ... [In this case, when] his wife and 
children make lots of requests [for money], the wife does not respect him.” 

When a marital relationship becomes locked into tense and abusive 
interactions, the focus groups consistently described how deep stress and mistrust 
can then take hold and become impossible to reverse. In a neighborhood of 
Moldova, the men stated bluntly: “Besides, no matter if the wife is good or bad, 
the husband will cheat on her anyway.” In the focus groups, women sometimes 
argued that the specific reasons for marital discord are not only arbitrary, but 
generally boring or unimportant. Men more often associated ongoing stress and 
discipline (of the woman] with somehow failing to demonstrate adequately their 
competence and authority as household head. Some testimonies from men 
suggested they felt they need to redouble their efforts and regain control, while 
others just give up on the relationship, as women do. This quote from an urban 
men’s group in Al Fashir, Sudan, is disquieting: “Disputes are something normal. 
Spouses may disagree over any of the daily life details and this may lead to 
conflict. In such cases, men have the right to beat their wives. This is normal.” 

The testimonies make clear that domestic violence is neither hidden nor 
mysterious. Men and women displayed plenty of awareness and understanding. 
A village man of Sumadija District, Serbia, commented, “It’s a known fact in the 
village who behaves like this, but nobody interferes in other people’s business.” 
Similarly, an urban women’s group in Pomoravlje District, Serbia, remarked, 
“There are women who pretend. They go out. They laugh. And they were just 
beaten.” Focus groups also provided eloquent explanations of its causes and the 
logic of the cruelty. In rural Ba Dinh District, Vietnam, the men explained that 
“men often use their strength to abuse their wives. They do so because they are 
stronger and they are patriarchal and they want to satisfy their ego.” Or in Milne 
Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, the men’s group warned what underpins 
ongoing conflict: “When husbands and wives don’t trust each other, then there is 
always misunderstanding between them.” 

In short, findings on marital strife reveal a world where intensely coercive 
behaviors against women are widely acknowledged. The violence is perceived to 
be easing, but still persists at varying levels. “Now women are becoming [more] 
powerful than men and men get furious,” observed a woman from National 


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Capital District, Papua New Guinea. Because the abusive tactics that characterize 
marital strife have strong roots in everyday initiatives that uphold and resist 
gender norms, violence against women is likely to have a dampening effect on 
gender norm change. Given the risks of overt challenges to gender norms, quieter 
everyday negotiations and a gradual relaxation of norms may provide a safer 
route for many, but certainly not all. 

Empowering women and increasing their agency, as much as finding exit 
options tor women who are in a threatening situation, remain central challenges. 
Initiatives that address the stressful and costly consequences of male gender 
issues require stronger policy attention and research. A young woman in urban 
Emputa village, Tanzania, urged, “There is huge need for education that 
addresses men and their problems as men. 1 think drinking too much and wom¬ 
anizing is their disease and needs a cure in order to have a better community. 
Men should stop beating their wives. There is too much of that here in this 
community.” 

Notes 

1. For discussion and other cases of how normative change can ensue over time through 
processes that imply both more and less hidden forms of resistance, see Rao and 
Walton (2004, 23-26) and Scott (1985). 

2. For a more detailed analysis see, for example, Coston and Kimmel (2012) and Connell 
and Messerschmidt (2005). 

3. Gender relations are power relations, even if they are not recognized as such and are 
willingly entered into. For example. Rich (1976, 57-58) defines patriarchy as “the 
power of the fathers: a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men—by 
force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, 
education, and the division ol labor—determine what part women shall or shall not 
play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male.” Men often do 
not realize that they benefit from patriarchy and women do not question such male 
privilege. 

4. As Jensen and Oster (2009) document in the case of the introduction of cable 
television in some communities in India. Also Fogli and Veldkamp (2011) report how 
in the United States the expansion of women’s participation in the labor force 
responded to access to information and peer examples. 

5. Sweden has consistently been ranked as one of the most gender-equal societies in the 
world. It regularly appears as one of the top five countries for gender equality in the 
World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2012 (Hausmann, Tyson, and 
Zahidi 2012) and UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index (2011). Gender equality in the 
household and domestic responsibilities sharing between men and women has been 
attributed to family-supportive legislation and gender-sensitive social policies (for 
more details see Nyberg 2011). 

6. Changes in bargaining power within the household have been widely documented by 
Lundberg and Pollack (1993), Stevenson (2008), and Aizer (2010), among others. 

7. There is a large literature on intergenerational transmission of norms. For thoughtful 
discussions, see Farre (2013), Quisumbing (1994), Inglehart and Norris (2003), Bisin 
and Verdier (2001), and Farre and Vella (2007). 


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Negotiating the Norms That Bind: A Winding Road 


8. Despite active campaigns in these countries to raise awareness about health and other 
risks of female genital mutilation, norms in some quarters persist in shunning 
“uncircumcised” girls, which leaves them severely disadvantaged in marriage markets 
(see Mackie 1996, 2()()0). Note that the World Bank does not use the term “female 
circumcision,” preferring the more accurate term, female genital cutting. 

9. In chapter 2, section titled "The Rise of the Swedish Husband: An Emerging Male 
Double Burden.” 

10. Also in chapter 2, section titled “The Rise of the Swedish Husband: An Emerging 
Male Double Burden.” 

11. A small number of groups dismissed domestic violence as a problem for their 
community and had little to say on the topic. 

12. Eor an economic perspective on these processes, Hoff and Stiglitz (2010) show how 
power historically has constructed social categories and identities that can reproduce 
.status differences long after opportunities across groups are made equal. 

13. The concept of hegemonic masculinity was developed as a reference framework 
encompassing the different traits of the normative ideal of male behavior. It refers to 
the dominant way to he and act like a man. 

14. Focus group participants were asked individually in private to estimate the incidence 
of domestic violence in their communities before any detailed discussions took place 
on this subject with the group. 

15. Generally, survey research is mixed on the association between domestic violence and 
women’s economic independence (Heise 2011). Two recent studies finding a signifi¬ 
cant link, however, include Hjort and Villanger (2011) and Heath (2012) on 
Bangladesh. See Chin (2011), who shows that reduction in domestic violence to rural 
women is associated with less exposure to their abusive husbands (reacting to their 
wives working for pay outside the household) rather than with their (wives’) 
increased negotiating power. 


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Aizer, A. 2010. “The Gender Wage Gap and Domestic Violence.” American Economic 
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Appadurai, A. 2004. “The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and Terms of Recognition.” 
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Bisin, A., and T. Verdier. 2001. “The Economics of Cultural Transmission and the Dynamics 
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Chin, Y. 2011. “Male Backlash, Bargaining, or Exposure Reduction? Women’s Working 
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25 (1): 175-200. 

Connell, R. W, and J. W. Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the 
Concept.” Gender and Society 19 (6): 829-59. 


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Coston, B. M., and M. Kimmel. 2012. "Seeing Privilege Where It Isn’t: Marginalized 
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Crowell, N. A., and A. W. Burgess. 1996. Understanding Violence against Women. 
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Farre, L. 2013. “The Role of Men in the Economic and Social Development of Women— 
Implications for Gender Equality.” World Bank Research Observer 28 (1): 22-51. 
Farre, L., and F. Vella. 2007. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Role Attitudes 
and Its Implications for Female Labor Eorce Participation.” Discussion Paper 2802, 
IZA, Bonn, Germany. 

Fogli, A., and L. Veldkamp. 2011. “Nature or Nurture? Learning and the Geography of 
Eemale Labor Force Participation.” Econometrica 79 (4): 1103-38. 

Foucault, M. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 2nd ed. New York: 
Vintage Books. 

Hausmann, R., L. D. Tyson, and S. Zahidi, eds. 2012. The Global Gender Gap Report 2012. 
Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum. 

Heath, R. 2012. “Women’s Access to Labor Market Opportunities, Control of Household 
Resources, and Domestic Violence.” Policy Research Working Paper 6149, World Bank, 
Washington, DC. 

Heise, Lori L. 2011. What Works to Prevent Partner Violence: An Evidence Overview. 
London: STRIVE Research Consortium, London School of Hygiene and Tropical 
Medicine. 

Hjort, .1., and E. Villanger. 2011. “Backlash: Female Employment and Domestic Violence.” 
Preliminary working paper. Department of Economics, University of California, 
Berkeley, CA. 

Hoff’ K., and J. E. Stiglitz. 2010. “Equilibrium Fictions: A Cognitive Approach to Societal 
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Holland, J., C. Ramazanoglu, and S. Sharpe. 1998. The Male in the Plead: Young People, 
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Inglehart, R., and P. Norris. 2003. Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change 
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Jensen, R., and E. Oster. 2009. “The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women’s Status 
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Kabeer, N. 1999. “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of 
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Lundberg, S., and R. A. Pollack. 1993. “Separate Spheres: Bargaining and the Marriage 
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Mackie, G. 1996. “Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account.” Amcncan 
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Quisumbing, A. R. 1994. “Intergenerational Transfers in Philippine Rice Villages: Gender 
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Rao, V, and M. Walton. 2004. “Culture and Public Action; Relationality, Equality of 
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M. Walton, 3-36. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 

Rauch, J., and S. Kostyshak. 2009. “The Three Arab Worlds.” Journal of Economic 
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Rich, A. 1976 (1995). Of Woman Bom: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. 
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Ridgeway, C. L., and S. J. Correl. 2004. “Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical j 
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Scott, J. C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale ! 
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Stevenson, B. 2008. “Divorce Law and Women’s Labor Supply.” Journal of Empirical Legal 
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Swaminathan, H., C. Walker, and M. A. Rugadya, eds. 2008. Women's Property Rights, HIV 
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UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2011. Human Development Report 
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World Bank. 2008. Whispers to Voices: Gender and Social Transformation in Bangladesh 
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Washington, DC: World Bank. 


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Having and Making Choices 


The power and ability to have choices and make decisions, and especially to have 
a say at crucial junctures of one’s life, are arguably the elements most frequently 
associated with agency. Together with having control over assets, including 
income from earnings, they are also the measures of agency most often used in 
the literature.' As Ibrahim and Alkire (2007) note, while asset and income 
control are more preconditions to agency than actual reflections of it, together 
with decision-making these measures allow for international comparisons, which 
are central to a study like this. The power to choose largely arises in household 
decision-making because there “individuals confront basic livelihood concerns, 
norms, values, power, and privilege” (Narayan et al. 2000, 219), including gender 
roles, as discussed in chapter 1. Women’s participation in decision-making at the 
household level is essential to their well-being and sense of self-efficacy. But this 
is not true for all domestic decisions. In the next chapter, we look at intra- 
household decisions linked to agency, such as those related to family formation 
and education of children. 

Women’s life trajectories are dependent on certain choices that they may (or 
may not) be able to make. While women and men make decisions every day, not 
all carry the same weight. Certain decisions have a greater impact on women’s 
and men’s lives’ paths, particularly whether and when to work, when and whom 
to marry, and how many children to have and when—which Kabeer (1999, 436) 
calls strategic life choices, or those choices “which are critical for people to live 
the lives they want.” Women participate in many routine decisions appropriate 
to their traditional role and the gender division of labor in a household. But these 
decisions are unlikely to be “strategic” and translate into empowerment or improve 
gender equality as a consequence. Women’s gains in power to decide or negotiate 
more significant issues are more evident in strategic life choices, where they 
perceptibly affect the course of women’s lives or influence desired outcomes. 


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Having and Making Choices 


Strategic decisions include how much to invest—or whether to invest at 
all—in the human capital of children (girls’ and boys’ education] and how to 
allocate different responsibilities, assets, duties, and rights inside and outside the 
household (e.g., who works, who does the caretaking, and who makes major 
spending decisions and on which expenditures). They are influenced by prevail¬ 
ing gender roles and norms, and by the relative voice and bargaining power of the 
adult members of the household. In a continuous feedback loop, as described in 
World Development Report 2012, the endowments that individuals have accumu¬ 
lated, the opportunities available to them, and their control over resources give 
individuals increased decision-making power and greater agency. Jointly with the 
relaxation or change of gender norms, such agency allows women to take advan¬ 
tage of opportunities to accumulate assets, challenge disadvantages arising from 
gender inequalities, and gain more control over their lives. 

The choices in crucial household decisions are subjective, reflecting individual 
preferences and interests, but are also influenced by specific contexts and con¬ 
straints. Partly dependent on the opportunity structure around a decision—for 
example, the presence of schools, the state of the local market economy, or avail¬ 
ability of reproductive health services—choices are also subject to norms and 
how they shape women’s and men’s preferences. Here, “culturally produced 
dispositions, beliefs, and behaviors” are likely to operate as “constraining prefer¬ 
ences” (Rao and Walton 2004, 15). They reflect both the internalization of the 
possibility of success or failure, given the dominant norms regulating a man’s or 
woman’s position in the broader social structure, and the ability to take advan¬ 
tage of the structure of opportunities. The slow pace of change in the “terms of 
recognition,” as Appadurai (2004, 64) notes, emphasizes the conditions and 
constraints under which women (and men) negotiate the gender norms that 
frame their lives. These terms of recognition are present in different forms, from 
rituals to cultural practices to public discourses and internalized beliefs— 
including whether a woman or man is recognized as entitled to be the decision¬ 
maker. They are central to having a voice and they affect the outcomes of 
decisions at all levels. 

What is evident, according to many of the focus group participants, is that a 
window to aspire to a different life, to more education, or to have a choice in 
important matters (such as family formation) has opened up. Whether or not 
these aspirations materialize depends on the structure of opportunities and avail¬ 
able resources, but the existence of such aspirations drive women (or men) to 
achieve them. The focus groups made clear that changing aspirations regarding 
children’s education lead to greater-than-average achievement by adolescents 
and youth in the community and encourage girls and boys to dream more ambi¬ 
tiously. What focus groups recounted about educational achievements in their 
communities tends to fall midway between norms and desires, due both to the 
presence of more schools and to the change of view regarding the value of educa¬ 
tion for children in general and girls in particular. A similar situation can be seen 
in other cases such as age of marriage or childbearing. Young women’s and men’s 
aspirations are not yet achieved, but they see the most likely materialization in 


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85 


their lives to be somewhere in between what has been the prevalent norm in 
their communities and what they aspire to for their own lives. 


Note 

1. For a review of agency, see Jejeebhoy, Presser, and Sen (2000); Ibrahim and Alkire 
(2007); Kabeer (2001); Samman and Santos (2009); and World Bank (2012). 


References 

Appadurai, A. 2004. “The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and Terms of Recognition.” In 
Culture and Public Action, edited by V. Rao and M. Walton, 59-84. Stanford, CA: 
Stanford University Press. 

Ibrahim, S., and S. Alkire. 2007. “Agency and Empowerment: A Proposal for Internationally 
Comparable Indicators.” OPHI Working Paper 4, Oxford Poverty and Human 
Development Initiative, Oxford, U.K. 

Jejeebhoy, S. J., H. B. Presser, and G. Sen. 2000. “Women’s Autonomy in Rural India: 
Its Dimensions, Determinants, and the Influence of Context.” In Women’s Empowerment 
and Demographic Processes: Moving Beyond Cairo, 204-38, edited by H. B. Presser and 
G. Sen. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Kabeer, N. 1999. “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of 
Women’s Empowerment.” Development and Change 30 (3): 435-64. 

-. 2001. “Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment.” In Discxissing 

Women’s Empowerment: Theory and Practice. Sidastudies 3. Stockholm: Novum Grafiska 
AB and Sida. 

Narayan, D., R. Chambers, M. K. Shah, and P. Petesch. 2000. Voices of the Poor: Crying Out 
for Change. New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank. 

Rao, V., and M. Walton, eds. 2004. Culture and Public Action. Stanford, CA: Stanford 
University Press. 

Samman, E., and M. E. Santos. 2009. “Agency and Empowerment: A Review of Concepts, 
Indicators, and Empirical Evidence.” OPHI Research Paper lOA, Oxford Poverty and 
Human Development Initiative, Oxford, U.K. 

World Bank. 2012. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. 
Washington, DC: World Bank. 


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mJ: Si /a 






CHAPTER 3 


Strategic Life Decisions: 
Who Has the Final Say? 


The women—and men—participating in this study make or influence their life 
choices via a process set within a non-egalitarian gender system that constrains 
their agency. In this chapter, we look at several specific strategic life choices 
(Kabeer 1999), which can be critical in determining the life men and women 
actually live and the Ufe they want to live.' We do not ignore the relevance of 
making small decisions or “empowerment in small matters” [Schuler and Rottach 
2010, 381) or its potential link to the ability to make large decisions. As Malhotra, 
Schuler, and Boender (2002) note, being able to decide what to cook—while not 
equivalent to having the power to make decisions about children’s schooling, 
health, or marriage—when aggregated with other small decisions may provide 
useful insights on intrahousehold decision-making processes. We asked the focus 
groups how much freedom women and men, young and old, have to make deci¬ 
sions about their own lives. Could they identify constraints? Did different social 
and gender norms affect their decision-making processes? 

The chapter begins by looking at education decisions. Here we assume that 
parents make the decisions rather than children. Deciding whether a girl or a 
boy goes to school, continues in school, and completes school has more to do 
with the parents’ decision-making authority and their views on education. As 
revealed by the “good student” attribute of both good girls and good boys 
[see figures 1.2 and 1.3 in chapter 1) and parents’ general aspiration of education 
for their children [as well as by young women and men for themselves), we can 
assume that, across the sample countries, focus groups so valued education as an 
investment in future well-being that it prevailed over traditional gender norms 
and roles. The second set of decisions the chapter looks at pertains to the first 
job. This decision sometimes remains in the hands of the parents, who may push 
children into the labor market to get an early return on the investment in their 
education or to acquire extra income to help deal with economic need. In other 
cases, the adolescents or young adults themselves make the decision to start 
working for pay. 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


The most visible of all strategic decisions for women center on family forma¬ 
tion. Women’s control over their own bodies is a strong marker of their agency, 
although it has been—and remains—highly contested. In traditional settings, 
where early marriage and childbearing for girls is common, parents usually 
decide when (what age) and whom a girl will marry. Also, mothers-in-law and 
other family members often have significant influence over a young wife’s 
childbearing, specifically when she should start having children, how many, and 
what desired sex. Sen ([1993] cited in Kabeer [1999, 458]) notes that reproduc¬ 
tive choice can be about agency, but it also may be a trade-off for other sources 
of power: “Bearing the approved number of children will grant a woman the 
rights and privileges accorded to a fertile woman, but does not necessarily give 
her greater autonomy in decision-making.” 

Similarly, decisions to wed may bring both new freedoms and new constraints 
for women. A woman may decide for herself when, who, and under what condi¬ 
tions to marry, but she may also “choose” under family and social pressures to 
comply with expected norms. Marital practices usually reflect cultural norms and 
are a sure sign of how gender relations and social relations are generally organized 
within a society (Malhotra 1997). As Kabeer (2005) observes, little agency exists 
when there is little choice or just a passive form of it. Agency that conforms to 
traditional gender norms may help women be effective in their gender-assigned 
tasks and roles, but it does not challenge the gender system. 

The chapter ends with the matter of intrahousehold decisions on use (expen¬ 
diture) of assets and household purchases. Women’s ability to get a job or start a 
business—in other words, to earn independent income—is a strategic means of 
increasing their bargaining power and participation in household decisions. 
Independent income also gives women something to fall back on if they need to 
leave a difficult or violent domestic situation. Being able to accumulate some 
assets, and to control them, also increases women’s agency and voice.^ 

Across the 20 countries in our study, some similarities in the major barriers to 
the exercise of agency emerged. It is not surprising that strategic life decisions are 
not necessarily affected by economic development. In some urban communities 
in the sample, we see more opportunities for women to actively exercise their 
agency and a greater universal value of education for both boys and girls. But in 
the private sphere, behind the household’s front door —regardless of location — 
conformity with traditional gender norms and practices remains persistently 
intact. While the aspirations of the younger generation are changing, many are 
unable to realize their goals, but signals show that they are on the way to do so. 

Investing in Education: Why Should Girls and Boys Go to School? 

Despite ongoing conflict and deterioration of local economic conditions and 
employment opportunities, access to education in Rafah, West Bank and Gaza, 
has persevered and risen, like most of the sites visited for this report: both 
women and men are graduating from secondary school and university or voca¬ 
tional school (tertiary level) at higher rates than 10 years ago. According to 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


89 


For those who have education, every single door is open. 

—Urban man, Kragujevac, Serbia 


the community’s focus group in the study, these changes occurred due to con¬ 
stant negotiation and interaction with prevalent gender norms. 

The adolescents’ focus groups from Rafah pointed out that, in line with tradi¬ 
tional gender roles, their fathers’ voice prevails in household decisions, including 
who stays in school and who must drop out. While some acknowledged that both 
parents decide about their schooling, the decision is largely out of their (girls’ or 
boys’) hands, regardless whether the parents consider their preferences or not. 

The parents participating in the Rafah focus groups gave similar reasons tor 
pulling their children out of school that we find in other sample countries. In the 
case of boys, household financial problems often dictate breaking off their educa¬ 
tion; “The boy and his parents decide he should leave school in order to find a 
job and help provide for the family.” For girls, marriage trumps education: “It the 
girl is pretty, then her parents stop her schooling to get her married.” (This may 
also apply if the girl is a bad student.) If a suitable man asks for a girl’s hand, she 
no longer needs to be educated because her future is guaranteed. 

In decisions about education, gender norms are in full play—the father’s authority, 
the good boy who works and provides for his family like a good man, the good 
girl who becomes a good wife and manages the household. When a girl leaves her 
parents’ house, though, education is then negotiated with the new man in her life. 
One 20-year-old woman in Rafah lamented, “I was studying to be a veterinarian, 
but because I had to go out to the farms with men as part of the practical study, 
neither my husband nor his family would accept it. My only solution was to change 
my major.” These normative constraints, however, are now pushing up against 
people’s growing recognition of the value of an education, both as an investment 
for future well-being (e.g., getting a good job) and as a transformative power that 
opens up previously unattainable possibilities and expectations, or the capacity to 
aspire (Appadurai 2004). Educating children—including girls—has become a new 
norm and deemed necessary to ensure their future, as almost all our focus groups 
agreed. Yet, the results of educating girls and boys are not as straightforward as 
they seem: the new aspirations and opportunities for those with more schooling 
are not always enough to overturn longstanding social and gender norms. 

The impact of education on access to future opportunities for boys and girls is 
undeniable. We know that the parents in our focus groups place high value on 
their children being good students and getting an education because they told us. 
But did the adolescent boys and girls agree? We asked the 670 adolescents in our 
study, who were 12-17 years old and lived in 41 urban or rural communities in 
9 countries.^ According to their average school enrollment, almost all ot them go 
to school, but the girls aspire to higher levels of education than the boys 
(figure 3.1). 

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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


Figure 3.1 Ideal Level of Education Reported by Adolescent Boys and Girls in the Study 



Ideal level of education 
■ Rural boys ■ Rural girls 



Ideal level of education 
■ Urban boys ■ Urban girls 


Note: Data from 670 students between 12 and 17 years in 8 countries. 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


91 


More than 60 percent of the girls in both urban and rural areas hoped to 
obtain advanced degrees, but only 40 percent of the boys sought this level of 
education. Girls and boys both expected that getting an education would give 
them a better future than their parents and would permit them to fulfill their 
parents’—and their own—aspirations for them. 

Boys, girls, and their parents invest in education because they expect to see a 
return on it, whether it is functional literacy or an advanced graduate degree. As 
Patrinos and Psacharopoulos [2004] document, education returns—expected 
earnings—have risen in all world regions. The increase in returns is higher for girls 
than boys when they go beyond primary schooM “Education takes us to good 
places; it is our road to employment and a path out of poverty,” exulted an ado¬ 
lescent boy from Fiji. A young man from Sudan agreed, “Education lets us join 
the modern world and offers us better jobs now. In the past, it was not important 
because our people were farmers and did not pay attention to the future or look 
to change the present.” Boys from urban Mongar District, Bhutan, explained that 
the gains are not only for them but for their entire families; “We can go to college, 
earn a salary, and help our struggling parents. It is payback time. We want to help 
our parents who got us educated with their hard-earned money.” 

But when people perceive that returns from education are low, investment in 
it falls off! Boys from urban West Bank and Gaza commented that staying in 
school longer than necessary was a waste of time and had little effect on their 
future economic participation: “[Higher education] is not important to us 
because we can learn a craft and work without a university degree.” In rural Sudan 
(Blue Nile State], boys also did not believe that education could really help them 
in the future. They mentioned knowing college graduates in the area who were 
unemployed. Worse, when prompted to describe themselves 10 years in the 
future, a group of boys from urban Sudan (Khartoum] answered, “jobless.” 

From education’s instrumental relation with income generation we can see 
how gender norms and expected behaviors pressure boys to contribute to the 
household in advance of their future role as expected provider—so much so that 
the opportunity to earn income takes precedence over any education opportu¬ 
nity; “If there is money, there is no need to learn” (young adult man, Olsztyn, 
Poland]. The poor economic conditions of many of the communities in the 
research sample also contribute to the lack of confidence in the value of educa¬ 
tion: “People don’t have any interest in education because they are too busy 
making a living” (adult man, Naw Da, Afghanistan]. However, as discussed earlier 
in part I, boys and men both are starting to resist and contest the expectations 
laid on them, and are contesting the masculine ideal of being the main provider 
and deciding to stay in school or to combine education with working in view of 
future aspirations. 

More education also imbues people with increased self-efficacy and confi¬ 
dence. For adolescent girls specifically, the added value of an education—beyond 
mere economic returns—is its positive impact on their agency, which is less 
important to boys as a reason for valuing education. Similarly, World Development 
Report 2072 shows that higher levels of education reduce the grip of social norms 

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that restricts women’s autonomy. For example, in South Asia and the Middle East 
and North Africa, women with more education are not as likely to have to ask 
their husbands or family for permission to seek medical care. Education gives 
them more freedom than earnings (World Bank 2012].^ 

The adolescent girls in the focus groups agreed, reporting that education helps 
them gain more control over their lives, bolsters their self-esteem, and opens up 
opportunities to earn their own income—all elements of independence. A girl 
from Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh], India, explained that, as part of achieving 
her goal to graduate from college, she tries to imagine what it takes to be selt- 
suflicient and learns how to manage her money. Another girl from urban 
I.autoka, Fiji, believed that education not only provides her with knowledge but 
also gives her the courage to “become someone in life, to even become the head 
of the household.” 

“Education is a girl’s best weapon to face the world,” summarized a girl from 
the neighborhocrd of Rafah, West Bank and Gaza. And she is right. Education has 
started reshaping local norms that define women and changing perceptions and 
expectations. It is often the mothers who envision a different life for their daugh¬ 
ters and strongly advocate for them to stay in school. In Fiji and Bhutan, both 
rural and urban girls told us that their mothers encourage them to study hard, so 
they are able to become independent and to look after themselves. 

Moving up half a generation to the 18-24-year-old women in the sample, who 
may have at least finished secondary school, we see that they share a similar view 
of education. They highly value education because they expect it to help them 
better their own and their children’s economic well-being and, more importantly, 
advance their personal development. Education leads to better decision making 
and strategic decision making requires information and education. “If you are not 
educated, you cannot think. When other people tell you things, you take too long 
to understand,” said a woman from Emputa village, Tanzania. “Education brings 
awareness of more things so that I make better informed choices,” noted a young 
woman from Bhubaneswar (Odisha], India. 

The literature shows that women with more education tend to have more 
control over other life decisions, and they tend to marry later and have fewer 
children,*" which was confirmed in many comments by the girls in the study 
about the lives they see their mothers leading: “My mum had to help look after 
her brothers and sisters [when she was young], so she could not complete her 
schooling or have the opportunity to work. She then bore six children and had 
to stay home and look after them. She spends all her time doing housework and 
looking after the family” (adolescent girl, rural Fiji). “My mother only finished 
10th grade. Her life was very simple in order to raise us. That is why I certainly 
don’t want to be like her (urban adolescent girl, Dirbas, West Bank and Gaza]. 
Social norms and the fulfillment of traditional gender roles, again, are the main 
reason that the girls’ mothers left school, and they remain as barriers to future 
opportunities for the new generation. 

When we asked parents in all 20 sample countries directly about their expec¬ 
tations for their daughters and sons, they tended to mention education as one of 


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the primary options that can offer their children a better future. They felt that 
having a school nearby or in the community was essential for their daughters, 
especially in difficult locales, such as the West Bank and Gaza, rural Afghanistan, 
or traditional communities in Burkina Faso, and among such minority communi¬ 
ties as the Roma in Serbia and indigenous populations in Peru. Fathers and moth¬ 
ers alike noted that their daughters gain more equal standing and have more 
independence from their future husbands when they can earn their own income. 
Young girls will “not be so easily confined” [Burkina Faso] when they secure the 
freedom to look after themselves. “For my daughter, I want her to have power. 
I want to give her an education, so she has more opportunities, and even a degree, 
so she can be independent. I want my daughter to be better than me,” asserted a 
rural woman from Peru. Neither mothers nor girls want to replicate the lives 
women in the past have endured, and they recognize education as their main 
outlet to change. 

Why Should I Leave School? Not My Choice! 

Who decides when it is time for a child to leave school? What factors influence 
this decision? Looking at our data, one-third of the young adults reported leaving 
school because they completed their education. Depending on the context, 
completion meant primary school to college level.^ A little less than one-third of 
the young men said that the decision to leave school early was their own, while 
an additional 22 percent indicated that the decision was made jointly with an 
adult. For young women, 15 percent acknowledged that they did not have a say 
in decisions about ending their schooling, compared to about 7 percent of boys 
(figure 3.2]. Young men were more likely to say that the decision to leave school 
was their own than were girls. 

Figure 3.2 Who Makes the Decision for Children to Leave School? 



Completed Own Decided Adult Other 

education decision with adult decided (bad marks) 


■ Young women ■ Young men 

Note: Data from young women and men (18-25 years old) in 113 focus groups. 


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My parents wanted me to keep learning up to 8th grade. I wanted to finish 
high school, hut my father forbade me. He said, "What do you need school for? 
You will get nothing out of going to school. You are Just wasting your days. 
So / secretly went to school, hut he found out and yelled at me, "I warned you 
about schoolV’I feel remorse that I listened to him. I could have continued, hut 
you need hooks and other things for school, and you need a lot of money for 
education. My mother only does what my father tells her to do. My brother 
only finished 5th grade because he did not like it. I liked school, hut my father 
would not allow it. He was afraid that I’d meet somebody there who would 
take advantage of me because I was a girl. 

—Urban woman, Kragujevac, Serbia 


Over halt the young women and men in our sample dropped out of school 
early, which will have a significant impact on their future. Unfortunately, it 
means the level of education that many of them hoped to reach will remain 
merely an aspiration. For example, from the Republic of Yemen to Bhutan and 
from Burkina Faso to India, the adolescent girls wanted to get at least a college 
degree, and the rural girls were aware that their education will likely only go 
through secondary school, if they are lucky. When we asked girls from India how 
far they thought they were truly likely to go in school, their answers varied. Like 
other girls from rural communities, some guessed they would just make it to 
secondary school and not fulfill their dreams of becoming doctors, lawyers, or 
engineers. 

The boys, too, aspired to get college and professional degrees, but realized 
that, like those in Burkina Faso and Fiji, primary school might be the end of 
their education. Other boys in Burkina Faso did not want to go beyond 
primary levels, and boys in the Dominican Republic put a low value on the 
promise of education to provide a better future. Indeed, parents of boys in four 
of the six African countries in our sample felt that their sons—not their 
daughters—did not take education seriously or value its potential benefits 
enough.^ Young men more often reported not liking school over other reasons 
for dropping out, including the need to work and the absence of a school in 
their community. 

Often, though, the adolescents’ and young adults’ focus groups mentioned 
lack of money and their parents’ decision as the two main reasons they left 
school. The lack of power to have the final say over their education cannot be 
disentangled from the reasons behind a decision to leave school. Stated prefer¬ 
ences and individual decisions do not take place in a void, but are constrained by 
opportunities, power imbalances in the household, gender systems, lack of infor¬ 
mation, and more. Distance and lack of infrastructure—from no roads to no 
nearby school—affect both boys and girls, but girls have more difficulties if there 


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is no school in their village, if they have to travel long distances to school, and if 
their friends drop out [they have no peers to walk with them to school} because 
their mobility is more restricted than boys’. Both also leave school to help sup¬ 
port their families [boys by earning an income, girls by working at home), to 
prepare for and marry early, or—as girls from Bhutan, Burkina Faso, the Republic 
of Yemen, India, and Sudan added—so they will be safe from violence and unap¬ 
proved pregnancies. 

Given the high valuation of education held by the communities in the study, 
it is not surprising that the participants always described the decision to pull 
children out of school as difficult. The same two fundamental reasons that drive 
families to educate their children—a better life and more income—are also the 
first ones parents mentioned for stopping their children’s education. On one 
hand lies lack of economic resources for school fees, transportation, and school 
materials, and on the other is the desire or obligation for young people to gener¬ 
ate income or reheve their famihes from the economic burden that education 
represents for the household budget. 

Forgoing the opportunity to invest in future returns from education may, at 
first glance, point to a lack of agency by a young woman. Both the Bhutanese girl, 
who opposed her father taking out a loan to pay for her education, and the young 
woman from India, who decided to leave school because her family cannot afford 
her education, are making a deliberate choice. Financial issues and family loyal¬ 
ties are so intertwined, however, that it is not that clear that this is an empowered 
or strategic choice. We can mark their decision as either a sign of self-determination 
or a passive choice due to pressure and lack of alternatives. When we judge a boy 
who leaves school because of financial constraints, the same duality appears. 

Especially with entrenched poverty, young people seem to have little bar¬ 
gaining power to state their preferences. A young man especially faces strong 
gender mandates calling him to be a family provider and act like a man. Young 
men’s accounts of leaving education due to family financial straits, however, 
show a proactive component. “Our family condition [financially] was not so 
strong. We thought of supporting our families” say young men from Jaipur 
[Odisha], India, and like them, other young men leave school not only to reduce 
stress on the family budget but also to make a positive contribution. “I had to 
leave school because my father separated from my mother and I had to support 
her,” noted a young man, from Lambayeque Province, Peru. The same impera¬ 
tive to generate an income was heard from boys in Moldova, West Bank and 
Gaza, and other countries. But when some boys and young adult men in the 
sample left school to gain economic independence, they surprisingly reported a 
sense of empowerment that other accounts did not have: “My parents weren’t 
happy when I decided not to go to high school. But I already had a job and was 
earning my living. I couldn’t focus on my studies anymore” [young man. East 
Jakarta, Indonesia). 

Looking further into young men’s accounts, we find that, even when they 
reported making the decision to leave school independently, they regretted it. 
They sometimes expressed as strong a wish to go back to school as the young 

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Strategic Life Decisions; Who Has the Final Say? 


men who had no say in the process. This signals that the decision was influenced 
more by restrictive circumstances, whether need or norm, and less by preference. 
It may be that the young men adapted their preferences to practical conditions 
and needs.^ Again, social norms associated with a sense of duty appear to be a 
primary factor. One young man in Lautoka, Fiji, put it matter-of-factly, “Father 
gtn sick, so I made my own decision [to leave school].” An Indonesian young man 
from Tangerang presented another constrained choice: “I wanted to continue my 
studies, but we didn’t have the money. So I decided to stop after I finished junior 
high school.” 

Overall, for young women, the traditionally instilled norms of inequality 
inside and outside the home raise more barriers to finishing their education. How 
are they able to exercise agency from their unequal bargaining position in the 
face of the traditional authority of fathers and husbands? A young woman in 
Tewor District, Liberia, justified leaving school: “[It was] my own decision 
because I had a husband and I had to follow his way. He said no, that I could not 
go to school.” Her situation showcases both lack of agency and her belief in what 
a good wife should do. While it may seem contradictory, because more girls than 
boys currently attend school, social- and gender-normative restrictions are more 
evident in regions where education for women still lags behind men’s or where 
general enrollment in school remains low, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and some 
regions of India: 

- The pressure of endless domestic tasks: “You see, if we went to school, who would 
do the housework?" (Rural young women, Malangachilima village, Tanzania) 

- Early childbearing: "My boyfriend got in the way of my education. When I was in 
the 6th grade, I got pregnant. I had the child and my boyfriend left me.” (Urban 
young woman, Greenville District, Liberia) 

- Traditional mobility restrictions on women in order to protect their ihrtue, propriety, 
family honor, and safety: “How can we walk on deserted and lonely jungle paths to 
reach school?” (Rural young women, Kalahandi District, Andhra Pradesh, India) 

- Household preference for educating boys: “As a girl, I had to agree with my parents 
to support the education of my brother. Time passed and now I am married with 
kids, and I have not been able to complete my education.” (Rural young woman. 
East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) 

We cannot claim, however, that it is more altruistic for boys to drop out of school 
to financially support their household than for girls to leave school to do house¬ 
work or to let a male sibling attend school. Agarwal (1997) reaches a similar 
conclusion: girls and boys equally have no choice but to agree to these “volun¬ 
tary” concessions. 

A frequent justification for preferring to educate sons rather than daughters 
involves inheritance laws and traditional roles associated with family financial 
support, especially in rural areas. Because young women will join another house¬ 
hold when they marry turns their education into a bad investment for their 


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family. Their acquired capacity from education will not serve their family: “There 
is a common belief that when we [women] get married, our education benefits 
the husband’s family, not our families. So a father feels that his family loses if he 
educates you” (young woman, Malangachilima village, Tanzania). Educating 
young men, on the other hand, has direct returns to the household. And while 
male power aflects both girls and boys when it comes to education, only girls are 
bound to transition from the school to the household. 

Despite diverse barriers, both boys and girls are staying in school longer than 
previous generations, and the overwhelming embrace of education is causing 
deeply engrained norms to slowly relax and bend. Signs of change are visible in 
narratives from the adolescents’ focus groups, which related accounts of tradi¬ 
tional, restrictive fathers who push their daughters to study and of mothers 
whose gains in voice may be counteracting the fathers’ resistance to schooling 
their daughters. “I am studying because my mother insisted that girls should at 
least complete 10th grade, even though my father doesn’t want me to study in a 
regular school,” announced an adolescent girl from rural India. For a Bhutanese 
girl, it is her educated brother who is pushing for change—”My brother forced 
my parents to put me in school. My parents never felt that I needed to go to 
school”—even though her parents’ views did not change in the long term. “They 
believed that I have to stay home and take care of the land and the main house 
of the family.” This girl eventually was pulled out of school when her brother left 
the house, but her knowledge and aspirations changed in the process. 

From School to Work: Getting the First Job 

Strategic choices do not arise frequently in a person’s lifetime, which makes their 
impact less visible in the short term, but their impacts are significant over a 
longer time frame. Starting a productive activity, such as finding a first job, is one 
example. As Malhotra, Schuler, and Boender (2002) recognize, getting a job can 
be a manifestation of women’s agency as a decision-making exercise, as well as a 
driver to promote greater agency. Women’s economic participation can be an 
enabling factor to predict women’s increased control over other important deci¬ 
sions in the household and their lives. Not all women, however, are free to make 
(or capable of making) the decision to leave the domestic space to start working. 
Household circumstances, gender roles, entrenched norms, and market opportu¬ 
nities all play into their decisions. 

In most of the communities in our survey, women have participated in the 
labor market for more than 10 years, but, like the 500 million women who have 
joined the global labor force since 1980, they have worked under disadvantaged 
conditions, with limited access to assets and services, and coped with the unequal 
gender distribution of household responsibilities." Getting a job requires that 
women, like men, have the skills that fit the work and access to information 
about labor opportunities; but unlike men, they also need an enabling environ¬ 
ment that includes options for childcare, redistribution of domestic tasks, access 
to transportation, and mobility. 

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In many developing countries in our survey, contexts of scarce opportunities 
drive the timeline for starting work. By age 13—some in rural areas were as 
young as 10 years old—the majority of the adolescent participants were already 
eccmomically active (much earlier than we expected], even if not continuously; 
they also frequently worked while going to school. Not surprisingly, some felt 
that they were thrust into the job market despite their desire to learn a skill or 
to complete their education. In addition, although more than half the young 
adults in the focus groups described making an independent decision to work 
(figure 3.3], in most rural settings and for women (regardless of location], it was 
less likely to be their decision than an adult’s. Urban young men appeared to have 
the most freedom to decide to work, as well as a larger, more diverse pool of 
opportunities. 

Like leaving education, the decision to start working is also usually made 
within constraints: the need to support the family, the lack of resources to afford 
education, the desire to be economically self-sufficient. “It was my own decision 
to help my parents” is something that we heard from urban young men and 
women in Indonesia and in the Republic of Yemen, where almost aU adolescents 
interviewed stopped their education, due to lack of resources, to start working or 
start helping at home. It was rare in the focus groups to find examples where 
adolescents or young adults managed to combine education and work success¬ 
fully in the long run. Going to school and holding down a job, when household 
finances were tight, often made continuing their education impossible, but also 
gave them a sense of independence from their parents’ designs—a first step 
toward self-efficacy and the capacity to act. According to adolescents in Umlazi 
township A (near Durban], South Africa, working and studying helped them 

Figure 3.3 Who Decides When Young Adults or Adolescents First Go to Work? 



Note: Data from 194 male arid female focus groups. 

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learn to be responsible and to manage their own money, but it is not easy, and 
more often than not students ended up choosing immediate returns over long¬ 
term investments. “Work is very demanding; it takes a lot of energy. If you are a 
student, it interferes with studying because your mind is always tired,” said 
a young girl from Umlazi township B. 

For about 20 percent of the adolescent focus groups, male and female, their 
first job was the first available job they could find. Education does not always 
guarantee more choices for economic engagement or meet all expectations—in 
particular for young men (Jeffrey 2008). One young man in Khartoum, Sudan, 
noted, “It is difficult to find a job, so we grab any that are available. You are 
lucky if you find a job in your profession. I studied computer science, but am 
working in a bank. It is a good job, but I want to be a computer programmer; 
I just didn’t find the chance.” “I think that even after completing their studies, 
some girls still have to stand behind a shop counter and some guys have to 
work at construction or something,” said a young girl from Justynowo, Poland. 
In some cases, their education qualifications become irrelevant under changing 
economic circumstances that are not under their control: 

You work at what you can, at whatever is available. I know someone who finished 
three years of vocational school for plumbers and got a job in "Gosa” paying 35,000 
dinars. Now, because the company was sold, he works as a security guard for 20,000 
dinars where his education credentials are not recognized. He can’t find any work 
in his profession.” (Village young man, Sumadija District, Serbia) 

In a few communities, however, where job prospects appear to be improving, the 
narratives of boys and girls were more positive in terms of decision-making 
power. A group of young girls in Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh), India, said, 
“mostly the boys decide where they want to work ... [but] now the girls can too 
because there are many job opportunities.” And with more work opportunities, 
education becomes more valuable. “For uneducated people, there are limited 
choices for work, so they have to take the first one. But in the many malls and 
shops, there are more jobs available if you have schoohng,” the girls from 
Hyderabad explained further. A young man of Hoang Mai District of Hanoi, 
Vietnam, noted that “in Hanoi ... those who have little education can work as 
motorbike drivers or masons. It doesn’t matter as long as the work brings an 
income.” Unfortunately, these examples are the exception. Adolescents and 
young adults predominantly pointed out that acute economic need in the family 
prompted their job-seeking decisions regardless of the availability of employ¬ 
ment choices. 

You Say, I Say: The Weight of Adult Voices on Job Decisions 

A young woman from Floresti District, Moldova, explained that “it is hard to say 
who pushes you to start making a living. When the economic situation of your 
family is poor, you have to make difficult decisions and, in this case, you have to 
ask for advice from your family.” Her comment refers to three elements that 
impinge on the decision to start working and run throughout the narratives 

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[After leaving school] I started working as an apprentice in a store tvith the 
help of my grandmother. 

—Urban young woman, Assoli Prefecture, Togo 


we heard in different communities; poverty or lack of resources, a sense of 
responsibility toward family, and the requirement to consult the family. Relatives 
and parents not only enforce behaviors—what a young man or woman can and 
cannot do—but also (particularly in contexts of limited resources and informa¬ 
tion) act as facilitators and guides in the quest to find a job. 

Parents and relatives are heavily involved in the search for the first job. On one 
hand, as the authorities in the family, parents must sometimes grant permission 
for their children to work (when they are not actively pushing them into the job 
market). On the other hand, young people can tap into adults’ experience and 
knowledge of the labor markets, as well as their connections or information 
about job opportunities. For young women particularly, “it is important to get 
approval [from the adults and heads of their households]. Without parents’ 
approval, you cannot work” (young woman, Sungai Puar District, Indonesia). 

Parents fiercely protect young women’s and girls’ safety and take measures to 
compensate for the girls’ lack of experience and information when it comes to 
decisions such as to work outside the home. For example, in Hung Yen District, 
Vietnam, young women think that “it is better to make a decision with an adult. 
Because you are inexperienced, you need your parents’ direction and support. 
After finishing school, I did not know much about the outside world, so my 
parents guided me.” And even young men, who rely less on adults (see figure 3.3), 
admitted that they seek advice from adults in their families. “I would ask my 
parents what they think about a particular offer or if they know the company. 
However, I would mostly ask my father, not my mother,” said a young man from 
Dobrowice, Poland. But gender bias, as always, is never far away. Due to men’s 
privileged engagement with the labor market, as household provider, they not 
only have better knowledge about the labor market but also have better contacts 
and networks to break entrance barriers. Mothers and other women may have 
similar experiences and information, but they are not seen as the best option, or 
sought out first, for counsel about getting a job. 

Sufficient labor opportunities and exposure to them often drive individual 
expressions of agency by young people in the sample, especially when training 
and local market opportunities combine. They take ownership of their decision 
and sense they can succeed. As a young woman from Hung Yen District, 
Vietnam, said, “I am highly independent and make all my decisions by myself 
Even if my parents give their opinions, I will still choose the job I like.” Changes 
in her community, including a new road connecting to the large city nearby, are 
catalysts of such behavior. Even the norms for parent-child relations give way in 


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the face ot the autonomy of the decision to work by young men. As one young 
man in urban Santiago de los Caballeros, the Dominican RepubUc, explained, “It 
is difficult in Santiago de los Caballeros for a father to tell his son what job he 
should get.” 

On the other side, norms that restrict women’s roles to the household can 
overwhelm their ability to make decisions to work in the public sphere and may 
increase parental involvement to the point that there is no individual choice. 
Young women in rural communities in India in the sample stressed over and over 
their complete lack of individual agency and that their only choice was total com- 
phance with parental decisions. Young women “will do whatever work the parents 
assign” and if “parents tell [them] to stop going to school and support the family,” 
they submit without a word. In Koudipally Mandal (Andhra Pradesh), girls rec¬ 
ognized that “mostly parents decide what we should do”; in Velugodu (Andhra 
Pradesh), the entire focus group recounted how adults determined their first jobs; 
and in Kalahandi District (Andhra Pradesh), a girl’s parents “refused to let me 
study further and insisted I look after my younger siblings. They also made me go 
to the jungle and collect produce, and hired me out for wage work.” Nowhere did 
young men in the sample relate such stories. Even when pushed to take certain 
jobs to comply with masculine expectations or to augment the family’s income, 
they believed they contributed to the decision and could give their opinion. 

"First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Baby 
in a Baby Carriage" 

From early in life, we face constant reminders of the relations expected between 
women and men. Even playground games and songs—such as the title of this sec¬ 
tion, which is a song used by children to taunt boys and girls seen as getting too 
close or too romantic with each other—charge our lives with gender signification. 
Thome (1993) refers to this process as gender play and children, as well as adults, 
recreate gender in everything they do, such as creating a couple when they see a 
boy and girl together. For most children, when they grow up, this becomes a real¬ 
ity. Starting a new household and having children are the most visible and signifi¬ 
cant life decisions, and are both the norm and the aspiration of most girls and boys. 

This section discusses how norms and prevailing practices around marriage 
and childbearing are bending, although they are infrequently challenged. As 
women’s empowerment grows, they gain more control over their bodies and 
fertility choices, such as contraceptive use, family size, spacing between births, 
and the sex composition of their children (.Jejeebhoy 1995b; Malhotra, Schuler, 
and Boender 2002). In turn, these new reproductive behaviors and changes in 
family formation influence women’s major life decisions. 

The position of women in the household is central to their ability, or lack of 
it, to exercise their agency, and this position varies with age, the bearing of chil¬ 
dren, economic participation, and more. Marriage and reproduction have a dif¬ 
ferent effect on men’s lives and agency. For many men, family formation moves 
them from a subordinated position—as sons under the authority of an older 


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Strategic Life Decisions; Who Has the Final Say? 


male—to the position of power in their own households. But with that power 
come responsibilities, such as the economic support ol the new family and the 
pressures to comply with associated norms. 

One of the messages that emerged from the discussions with young adult 
women and men in the study is a desire to delay starting a family until they have 
greater control over their lives. They consider having an education and a job with 
a steady income, as well as physical and psychological maturity, to be precondi¬ 
tions for a secure adult family hfe. These yearnings for control, however, con¬ 
stantly interact with social norms and expected behaviors about how and when 
family formation should begin. Different views on the appropriate age for mar¬ 
riage may have an impact on the accumulation of endowments [e.g., education] 
and the capacity to take advantage of economic opportunities. 

Marriage may free young women from their father’s control, but it often is 
simply a transition into different situations of disadvantage with another male 
[their husband] and of decreased agency as a junior female among the women in 
the husband’s extended family (Kabeer 2001]. Arranged marriages are still cus¬ 
tomary in some of the study communities, as are financial payments, such as a 
bride price {lobola in southern Africa] or a dowry. In other sample communities, 
women have to yield to strong pressure from husbands and in-laws over the 
number of children they bear. Retrospective accounts of young women who 
regretted getting married and having children too early make evident the impor¬ 
tance they attach to starting a family at the right moment. The accumulation of 
experiences, awareness of women’s rights, gains in bargaining power, and accu¬ 
mulation of resources are all curtailed by early family formation, as are women’s 
achievement of their individual aspirations and expectations for the future. 

There are two main decisions that lead to family formation: childbearing and 
marriage (both arranged and consensual unions]. What signs tell women and 
men when is the right time to wed and start a family, whether to have children 
[or not] and how many, and whether they have enough autonomy to make these 
decisions? Agency develops throughout life on a continuum of small gains in 
empowerment: gains early in life emerge later as an improved capacity to decide. 
Factors, such as marriage circumstances and family formation, may at times be at 
odds with gains in agency, especially from education or a job, and have to be 
negotiated with existing social norms. 

For example, one of the most contentious areas of autonomous decision 
described by the focus groups has to do with reproduction. The arguably central 
position of sexuality in shaping gender relations and reproducing inequality 
between women and men constrain sexuality and reproduction both socially and 
poUtically.'^ In fact most gender issues, whether in work, family life, or divisions 
of labor, revolve around reproduction and sexuality.Reproduction encom¬ 
passes more than the single event of having a child. It triggers a set of other future 
choices that push women toward specific paths in line with norms and social and 
cultural ideas, and practices surrounding childcare and motherhood. The cross- 
cultural character of this study reveals how the beliefs, norms, and values sur¬ 
rounding women’s reproductive behavior significantly affect all realities, in both 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


103 


rural to urban locations, in all countries. These norms are so entrenched, accord¬ 
ing to the focus groups, that a woman who does not opt for reproduction is seen 
as denying what she really wants. But a man who is not particularly involved in 
childrearing, does so because fatherhood is not based on the same natural drive 
as a woman. Among the study communities, it is still assumed that motherhood 
is a core marker of adult femininity and that the normal outcome of marriage is 
the production of children. And more often than not, motherhood exacerbates 
gender inequalities derived from gender roles. 

So He Proposed... 

Data dating back to the 1950s, from a set of non-OECD and OECD countries, 
show that women’s age when they first marry has increased, although they are 
still marrying at a younger age than men, and that men’s average age at marriage 
has remained stable. The young adults in our study mirror these global averages 
along with rural and urban differences with marriage. Almost half the rural 
women’s groups said that women in their communities marry by age 17. In 
urban settings, only 30 percent of young women marry this young (table 3.1]; 
most young women wed between the ages of 18 and 25, around the age of 
majority in many countries; however, the difference between the rural and urban 
young women is more than 10 percentage points. Similarly, rural young men and 
rural young women marry earlier than their urban counterparts. 

Most young women and some men in the sample, rural and urban, wished to 
marry when they were older, even those young women who were already mar¬ 
ried at the time of the interviews (the majority]. Some communities, however, 
did not approve of couples marrying or having kids over a certain age and, 
although the appropriate window of time varied, most agreed that the ideal age 
was 18-20 years and not before. 

Reasons for delaying marriage were similar to those for delaying reproduction; 
maturity and social and financial stability. One young woman from Jahran 
District, the Republic of Yemen, was married at 15 and explained that “getting 
married at a young age was a disadvantage and hard on me because a girl cannot 
handle all the household responsibilities and have children at that age.’’ Marrying 
too early also interferes with education: “I got married at 16 years old, but it was 
supposed to be when I was to be 24 years old and had completed my education,’’ 
lamented a young woman from River-Nile State, Sudan. Marrying later leads to 
a better outcome for both partners: “Both of us are employed, so that we started 


Table 3.1 Age of Marriage for Women and Men in Focus Group Communities 

percent 




15 years or less 

16-17 years 

18-25 years 

26+ years 

Men 

Rural 

15 

23 

54 

8 


Urban 

14 

17 

57 

12 

Women 

Rural 

26 

22 

44 

7 


Urban 

13 

18 

48 

10 


Note: Average age of marriage in each community as reported by 194 young adult focus groups. 


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Strategic Life Decisions; Who Has the Final Say? 


life together on a solid basis” (young woman, Sumadija District, Serbia]. Indeed, 
research shows that women’s education is a stronger determinant than men’s for 
higher age at marriage and first child. 

Rural young women and girls in our sample were five times more likely than 
rural young men and boys to drop out of school to marry or have children. For 
urban young women and girls, pregnancy or marriage made no difference in 
school dropout rates, although girls were more likely than boys to interrupt their 
education to marry. Like other studies, couples where the women had more 
education tended to have fewer children (lyigun and Walsh 2007], both because 
the women may have more agency within the household and because they have 
better opportunities and are more likely to participate in the labor market. And 
educated mothers were more likely to invest in education and better nutrition 
for their children’s well-being (Thomas, Strauss, and Henriques 1990]. 

The reasons young women in the study married younger than they wanted 
highlight the imposition of strong social and cultural norms, namely, marriages 
arranged by their families or forced unions for financial reasons and pregnancy. 
For example, in Firestone District, Liberia, young women and girls explained that 
“pregnancy can force people here to live together in a Congo [makeshift struc¬ 
tures attached to the main house to accommodate the new family]. As soon as a 
boy impregnates a girl, he can bring the girl to his family’s home.” Similarly in 
Peru, co-habitation was reported as the obligatory step after an unintended preg¬ 
nancy. In Samtse, Bhutan, young women and girls felt strongly that arranged 
marriages should cease and that men and women should have the freedom to 
choose their partners. 

The younger adult women’s groups expressed discontent with current mar¬ 
riage practices, especially young urban women, and tended to question them, 
although their opinions were divided. Young men’s views were also spht, but 
urban young men were slightly less inclined to reject current marriage practices, 
probably because they have more freedom to choose. Young women in towns 
and cities seem more dissatisfied (or more able to express dissatisfaction] with 
marriage practices than all other groups. In some cases, the expenses associated 
with a formal wedding were a concern; in others, traditional practices, such as 
dowries and bride prices, were questioned as being unnecessary and costly. 

Most of the women and men in the study felt that they freely decided their 
marriages, and reported seeing greater autonomy in some communities in select¬ 
ing their partners, compared with their parents’ generation. For example, young 
people in Poland generally felt free to be with whom they wanted and to decide 
whether to live together or get married. One young woman noted that pressures 
to marry in case of pregnancy, while they have not disappeared entirely, are fad¬ 
ing away, even in rural or more traditional communities like hers. On the other 
hand, arranged marriages are still customary in West Bank and Gaza, the 
Republic of Yemen, and India. In these countries, according to our study, the 
bride and groom may not necessarily oppose the union, but have no say in select¬ 
ing their partner. This is particularly true for young women and girls, whose roles 
are mostly passive. Men may indicate their wish to wed a particular girl without 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


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convening the norm, although it may or may not be approved by their families. 
In India and West Bank and Gaza, traditional arranged marriages are more com¬ 
mon than freely chosen ones, even though some love marriages do occur 
(between 3 and 20 percent, according to focus group participants). 

Frustration with current marriage norms is most evident in sample countries 
where traditional rituals involve economic costs for the bride’s or groom’s family, 
such as bride price (e.g.. South Africa, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, and 
Afghanistan) or dowry payments (e.g., Bhutan, Sudan, Liberia, India, and Serbia). 
While the young people did not always disagree with these cultural practices, 
they spoke of the difficulty in complying with them, when facing economic 
hardship, and the power differentials that they can create in the bride’s future 
home.'^ For example, girls who do not have an adequate dowry have trouble 
getting married or are mistreated and abused by the groom’s family. “If girl brings 
a large dowry, she will be treated well”; “girls who don’t have a proper dowry are 
not treated well”; and “they will be treated well only for a few years,” said young 
women from India. Another young woman in .Jaipur (Odisha), India, related how 
her sister had been deserted by her husband and in-laws because of what was 
considered insufficient dowry: “She was physically tortured for a period of time 
to get INR’^ 50,000 more from our parents, which they did not have the 
resources to give.” Young Indian women in Bhubaneswar (Odisha) strongly felt 
the dowry system should be stopped entirely: “The bride’s family should decide 
how much they want to give to a daughter on her wedding.” In cases where the 
bride’s family receives the assets, girls in Malangachilima and Zabibu village, 
Tanzania, complained that they were being married off for economic gain: 

Some parents force their children to get married in order to get income from the 
bride price. Girls are married off at an early age; but they are young and behave like 
children, so they never last in marriages. Most times, these girls are poor because they 
have had no jobs, except farming, and their husbands mistreat them because they are 
dependent on them. Yes, there needs to be change. Our parents should not see us as 
an income-generating asset. We should be able to choose the right time to marry and 
which men we want to marry. (Rural young woman, Zabibu village, Tanzania) 

Bride prices paid to a household represent a valuation of the woman’s productive 
and reproductive capacities. Dowry, on the other hand, speaks to the groom s 
capacity to earn an income, as well as a valuation of his status in the social hier¬ 
archy.'^ Generally, young women’s decision-making power in marriage choice or 
timing is completely nonexistent when financial gains are at stake. Young women 
in the study also rejected the consequences of payments in terms of male “owner¬ 
ship” of the wife. For example, for women in National Capital District, Papua 
New Guinea, a bride price renders them more vulnerable to domestic abuse 
since “customary marriages mean once the husband buys the lady, he can do 
whatever he wants to do with her. Her parents and brothers are not able to do 
anything to help her. A wife cannot go back to her family if problems arise in her 
marriage.” Young women have little leeway to choose their partner and have little 
voice once they enter into a domestic partnership. 

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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


While, in theory, bride price can be interpreted as explicit recognition and 
valuation ol women’s potential contribution to marriage, in practice, it often 
limits women’s control over their own lives. Similarly, in theory, dowry may 
endow daughters with property (or an inheritance) early in life to protect them 
(or give them some agency), but in practice, it transfers “their” property rights to 
the husband. It is worth noting that it is not just women who want to change 
traditional marital practices. A young man in Koudipally Mandal (Andhra 
Pradesh), India, explained that, although a dowry is traditional and common 
practice, although he took a dowry for his wife, and although he (like other men) 
has control over the assets taken under dowry, he still felt that “more love mar¬ 
riages should take place.” Young men in Sudan (Red Sea State) also wanted to be 
able to freely choose who to marry, but they did not believe that women should 
have the same right. 

Most focus groups indicated that formalizing a union via wedding or civil 
ceremony is customary, but they called less forcefully for expanding that practice. 
Interestingly, in Peru where informal unions are more frequent, some young 
women wanted legal unions because they felt that a marriage contract brought 
them more benefits and rights, such as financial support for childrearing and 
social status and respectability. They also believed that they gain vozyvoto (voice 
and say) in their household. For them, a formal marriage Ucense, by securing their 
status as wives, is a means of getting more equal footing with their partners. 

But norms and practices are hard to change. The desires of young women to 
change certain practices restricting their freedom to choose do not go unchal¬ 
lenged. Young men in Afghanistan, the Republic of Yemen, Tanzania, Sudan, 
Vietnam, South Africa, and Fiji, and some adult women in South Africa, the 
Republic of Yemen, and Vietnam, pushed back strongly. They argued for the 
protection of traditional marriage customs to preserve the norm—the way things 
have been done in their culture as passed down by the ancestors—for the future. 

How Can a Child Take Care of Another Child? 

The average age of a girl or young woman when they bear their first child varied 
among the communities studied. As seen in table 3.2, rural focus groups reported 
that women start having children much earlier than their urban peers, and earlier 
than the average age that young men become fathers for the first time. Nearly 
50 percent of rural groups said most girls were mothers by age 17, compared 


Table 3.2 Age of Men and Women at Birth of First Child 

percent 




15 years or less 

16-17 years 

18-25 years 

26 - 1 - years 

Men 

Rural 

15 

23 

54 

8 


Urban 

14 

17 

57 

12 

Women 

Rural 

26 

22 

44 

7 


Urban 

13 

18 

58 

10 


Note: Average age of marriage in each community as reported by 194 young adult focus groups. 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


107 


with 30 percent for urban women, who started having children at the same age 
they married—^between 18 and 25 years—much like urban men and a significant 
share of' rural men. 

Whether urban or rural, male or female, the majority of focus groups agreed 
that the current average age that women had their first child or pregnancy was 
not appropriate and should change, and that women were having children too 
early in life. But like the decision to marry, urban men were the only group that 
split between questioning current practices and trends, and not changing them; 
but again, they have more flexibility about when to wed and more options in 
choice of potential partners, as well as a larger range of opportunities to work, 
study, and access contraception. 

The gap between the current and desired age to become a parent, described 
by the focus groups, is significant. Most groups preferred 20 years of age or more, 
and sometimes even older than 30. Their main reasons for delaying childbearing 
were similar: mother’s physical health, parents’ maturity, and parents’ social situ¬ 
ation (marital status, financial situation, and education level). A young man from 
Monrovia, Liberia, summed it up, saying “parenthood is not for young people.” 

Indeed, the discussions about delaying childbirth often raised the issue of the 
health (and even the life) of the mother when she is too young, but more as a 
general concern than a challenge to the norm that marked young age as appropri¬ 
ate for starting reproduction. Still, many communities consider teen pregnancies 
problematic. According to a young woman from Tchien District, Liberia, “[At 14] 
the girls’ bodies are too small. They suffer too much. ... They get sick. Some of 
them have to go to the hospital because their bodies are so small.” Another 
Liberian young woman from Zorzor worried that “sometimes you can die when 
you have a baby this early [16 years old].” In the Republic of Yemen, one young 
woman’s 14-year-old sister died due to early pregnancy, as did the school friend 
of a young woman from the Dominican Republic. Even a man from Emputa vil¬ 
lage, Tanzania, noted, “In our community, women have children at the age of 12.” 

Both boys and girls in their focus groups mentioned pregnancy as one of the 
reasons girls and boys left school early. A young woman in Firestone District, 
Liberia, warned that, at early ages, girls are “not ready for children. When you 
have a child, you will not be able to go far in school. You will suffer because the 
boys will disown the pregnancy and will not support you when you get pregnant.” 
Even young men agreed that women should prioritize education over childbear¬ 
ing. For a young South African man, a woman should have children “at the age of 
23 because she has completed her tertiary education, maybe has a decent job, and 
is able to support her children.” A young woman from Cusco Province, Peru, who 
had her daughter at 18, wished that if she “could do everything all over again, 
[she] would have had her daughter at 25 so [she] could continue studying.” In 
'Velugodu (Andhra Pradesh), India, a young woman who was married when she 
was 10 and had her first child at 15, asserted, “This is not the right age. ... A girl 
should have a child when she is able to understand what is right and what is 
wrong.” Overall, the focus groups felt that having children too early means that 
the parents, especially the mothers, must give up their dreams for the future. 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


How Many Children Is Too Many? 

Once reproduction has started, couples should be able to negotiate the number 
of children they want to have. As shown in figure 3.4, the discussions in most 
urban focus groups, and by rural men, indicated that couples jointly decide on 
the number of children to have. Only 20 percent, however, of the young adult 
women in both rural and urban areas said that the decision on how many chil¬ 
dren to have was in their hands. Rural women (40 percent], though, described it 
differently: what men consider a joint decision in rural communities is basically 
the man’s decision. The husband decides the number and spacing of children 
because it is inherent in his role as household head; the wife agrees with his 
authority and accepts the outcome of the decision.Some young women justi¬ 
fied a man’s right to decide because he pays the bride price or has the power to 
impose his will through violence. Other women indicated that, when faced with 
disagreement about having children, men compelled their decisions either 
through forced sex or by threats to leave the wife or take an additional wife. 

In some cases, the decision to keep having more children is also imposed by 
men as a means of keeping women under control: “The decision of how many 
children to have comes from the man. The man tells the woman the number of 
children he wants. If she says she’s tired, the man will beat her,” explained a 
young woman from Zorzor, Liberia. And young men are also aware of their deci¬ 
sion power: “Mostly the man says he will marry another wife if she doesn’t have 


Figure 3.4 Who Decides on Number of Children? 



■ Women's decision ■ Joint decision ■ Men's decision □ Other's decision 


Note: Data from 194 young adult focus groups. 

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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


109 


[a] baby” (Old City, West Bank and Gaza]. In the Roma community of 
Kragujevac, Serbia, comments extended to the extreme of valuing women only 
for their reproductive capacity. “A woman exists only to give birth to a child. 
What does she have to do with deciding how many children to have?” 

In the sample countries, the Republic of Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, India, 
West Bank and Gaza, Burkina Faso, Fiji, Liberia, and Vietnam, and among the 
Roma population in Serbia, young women felt that the decision to have children 
was forced on them, not just by their partners, but by family members (his and 
hers]. Sometimes it is an older woman who imposes her will on a young woman. 
The role of mothers-in-law in determining the number of children young wives 
have appears unchanged in Fiji, India, and West Bank and Gaza, especially the 
pressure for male children. Furthermore, in many of these communities, women 
attributed their future reproduction to forces beyond their control, such as God’s 
or Allah’s will, fate, and more. While the exception, a few focus groups rejected 
any public discussion about reproduction as inappropriate, showing how little 
control over reproduction is talked about.^^ 

More groups than we expected described childbearing as a non-decision. In Peru, 
the Dominican Repubhc, and many African communities, the adults and even 
younger women spoke of childbearing as accidents or as events that just occur. In 
the experience of young women in Chiclayo, Peru, and Tchien District, Liberia, 
having children “is not something you decide. It just comes and you have to look 
after [the baby].” In these cases, while social norms may not be binding, their lack 
of agency combines with lack of information about their own reproductive process. 

There are indications that the grip of some social norms on family formation 
has started to relax (Jejeebhoy et al. 2002; Malhotra 1991]. Better information 
and access to family planning (mainly contraception] enable women to claim 
agency and greater control over their bodies, even though progress may still be 
limited by the opinion of others—family members, community, religious groups, 
and others. Women’s Ufetime earnings and education are negatively associated 
with the number of children they have, particularly those who begin childbearing 
early, so acting to take control of their situation is an important step.^^ 

In the rural areas that make up almost half of the communities in the research, 
we expected to find restrictions on contraception availability and use. Both rural 
and urban women in the study, however, can get contraception and use it fre¬ 
quently. Control over one’s own reproduction and fertility, and use of fertility- 
control mechanisrhs are clear signs of agency, control and ownership, and 
self-determination by women. 

We see a crucial change when we compare the generations of adult and young 
adult women in the sample in their access, knowledge, and acceptance of family 
planning services. Young adult women have far more control over their reproduc¬ 
tion, due to the life-altering changes made possible by the availability of family 
planning services. For example, in Samtse, Bhutan, the young women pointed out 
that “before there was none ... but now around 90 percent of women use injec¬ 
tions to limit the number of children in the family.” In Comendador, the 
Dominican Republic, a young woman felt that “one has control because there are 

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no 


Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


SO many methods,” and in Tewor District, Liberia, another young woman noted 
that “now women can decide. Now there is family planning. Before, the man used 
to tell the woman how many children to have.” Either because of contraception’s 
positive effect on women’s empowerment or because its use is driven by the soar¬ 
ing costs of raising children (as mentioned by the Vietnam and Papua New Guinea 
participants], women are controlling their fertility more as they desire. 

This increased control and attitude change is striking when we compare the 
average number of children their mc^thers had with the number of children the 
younger generation of women desire to have (table 3.3). An overwhelming 
majority of the older mothers in the study had a minimum of three children or 
more, with some variations. Urban women—probably due to their exposure to 
more relaxed norms, more certain supply of contraception, and better economic 
opportunities—were more likely than rural women to have fewer than three 
children. (These same factors hold for younger women as well.) Rural women, 
however, wanted more children than urban women. The picture changes when 
we look at young men, who aimed for a larger family size than women, particu¬ 
larly in rural contexts. 

Like marriage, childbearing changes the status of women in some localities, 
which influences their ability to control when to have children (and the num¬ 
ber). When the same women in Tchien District, Liberia—who asserted that 
children just happen—get married, they face heavy pressures to have a large 
number of children, which has become a competition among families in the 
community. It is no surprise that the man’s status is at play; “The men decide. 
They tell me that they want 7, 10, many children. They make sure that their 
women bear that number,” related a young Liberian. Having many children rein¬ 
forces the husband’s conformity with the prevalent norms of masculinity. “You 
cannot tell men to use birth control; they want children. The more they have, the 
more manly they appear to be” (young woman, Zabibu village, Tanzania). 

In hne with perceived ideal masculine behaviors, young men did not oppose 
the use of contraceptive methods by women, but they generally refused to use 
them, even where HIV/AIDS is a known risk. (Tanzania is one exception.) Young 
men from Umlazi townships A and B, South Africa, rejected condoms for 
their impact on their sexual enjoyment, preferring “skin to skin” relations because 
“you cannot eat a sweet with the wrapping.” In Santiago de los Caballeros, 


Table 3.3 Number of Children of Mother Compared with Desired Fertility for Self 

percent 



Location 

1 child 

2-3 children 

3 or more children 

Mother's average number of children 

Rural 

0 

19 

81 


Urban 

0 

24 

76 

Women's expectations for number of children 

Rural 

9 

47 

44 


Urban 

12 

49 

39 

Men's expectations for number of children 

Rural 

8 

31 

61 


Urban 

9 

41 

49 


Note: Data from 194 young adult focus groups. 


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Strategic Life Decisions; Who Has the Final Say? 


Ill 


the Dominican Republic, young men wear condoms only when having sex with 
women other than their wives to avoid bearing bastard children. In the specific 
case ot vasectomies (available in public reproductive health services in India and 
Bhutan), men and women feared that it affects men’s physical strength, capacity 
to work, and sexual drive. Because it might alter their manhood, men preferred 
that women undergo sterilization, if that is the couple’s decision. 

Pink or Blue? Girl or Boy? 

The preference for sons is associated with cultural custom and norms, local 
community characteristics, the ability of women to have a say about their repro¬ 
ductive preferences, and household characteristics (Astone and Pande 2007). 
Social norms in this context probably play the largest role, in terms of the value 
of women in society, the association of sons with transmission of bloodline 
(Das Gupta 2009), inheritance practices (Carranza 2012), and other traditions. 
In some countries, the quest for a son is reflected in a larger number of children 
when the first born is not a male, while in others—most noticeably China and 
India—it has led to skewed preferences and unbalanced sex ratios.When asked 
about their preference for the sex of their children, the participants in our study 
indicated that the traditional preference for sons wanes in cities, especially 
among young women. Along with conventional arguments on the benefits of 
having boys emerged narratives about the advantages of raising girls. Figure 3.5 
shows that all the men clearly preferred male children, particularly rural men, 
where 46 percent of preferences are for a son. Urban men and women show 
similar levels of indifference regarding their children’s sex, but have opposite 
views when it comes to preferring a boy or a girl. More women overall, though, 
actually prefer girl children than having no preference for the sex of a child. 


Figure 3.5 Sex Preference for Children 



Rural young Rural young men Urban young Urban young men 

women women 

■ Prefer male ■ Prefer female I No preference 


Note: Data from young adult focus groups (258 mentions). 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


although rural women are equally split between preferring male and female 
children. 

A deeply ingrained set ot normative views about gender distribution of 
responsibilities and perceptions by communities permeated the reasons for pre¬ 
ferring sons, echoed by the participants. It is based on the consequences of inheri¬ 
tance laws and customs that determine what the male members of the family are 
entitled to, such as family property and business; having boys guarantees that 
assets or patrimony remain in the family; 

In our community, life is difficult for the man [and his immediate family] who does 
not have a son. Most of his relatives expect to get his property when he dies and his 
property is distributed by his relatives and not [given to his] wife or daughter. If he 
has a son, all his property will belong to his son. (Rural young woman, Naw Da, 
Afghanistan) 

Males carry the family or clan name and guarantee the continuity of the lineage; 
the family’s status increases if the son does well: “I prefer a boy. I will be socially 
accepted if he succeeds” (young woman. River Nile State, Sudan). Boys are 
expected to help support the household with their earnings and provide for 
elderly parents: “We have to depend on our sons to take care of us. Daughters 
have to care for their husband’s family” (young man, Hung Yen District, 
Vietnam). Many participants considered sons easier to care for because they 
represent less risk to the family’s honor: “It is more difficult to provide a good 
upbringing for female children. To go out to a cafe and drink alcohol is all right 
for men, but not for women. If a girl sleeps with 115 guys, everyone labels her in 
one way; if a man does the same, everyone sees it differently [as not so bad]” 
(young woman, Sumadija District, Serbia). Boys who have more freedom carry 
positive externalities for the father: “A father can have fun with a son or drink 
with him” (young man, Justynowo, Poland). And in conflict areas, such as 
Afghanistan and West Bank and Gaza, sons help protect the household better 
than daughters. 

The reasons for preferring girls also reflect the normative and institutional 
systems underlying gender inequalities. When daughters were preferred, the 
focus groups desired them for their feminine qualities. Daughters take care of the 
parents, especially in old age; “It’s different when you grow old. A daughter will 
more likely take care of the mother than a son (young woman, Justynowo, 
Poland); “[I want] my first child to be a girl so she can help me with housework” 
(young woman. East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea). Girls have a better 
understanding of household management and its difficulties. Girls are easier to 
bring up because “a girl is more docile and she keeps you company” (young 
woman, Chiclayo, Peru). Families look at the future economic reward that girls 
represent when they marry; “I prefer daughters because I know that at some 
stage I will benefit from her [bride price]” (young man, Umlazi township B, 
Durban, South Africa). 

These views plainly reflect the expectations attached to different life paths for 
male and female children. The preference for girls has increased in our sample 


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communities, especially in urban areas, which may be due to women’s greater 
access to education and economic opportunities, but may also point to a change 
in the overall position of women in society—as experienced and witnessed by 
the young women interviewed. The fact that preference for girls is still very 
much based on their roles as homemakers and caregivers, however, shows the 
persistence of traditional gender roles and power, and asset distribution in 
the hands of men. 


What Is Mine Is Yours: Asset Control and Decision-Making 

Control over resources—measured by women’s ability to earn income, control 
their income, and own assets—is instrumental to women’s agency and may 
increase their bargaining power, their position, and their ability to make decisions 
or gain voice in a household, as noted clearly in World Development Report 2012. 
It gives them power over their lives by allowing them to leave an unequal family 
situation and raises their value in society and to their families.Lack of assets 
severely limits women’s choices by rendering them powerless to negotiate better 
terms for themselves in their households or with a range of formal and informal 
institutions where control over income or assets becomes important for them to 
have a voice (Narayan 2002). Not having control over one’s own assets basically 
means not having those assets at all, which diminishes one’s capacity to make 
strategic life choices. 

Women are not strangers to asset management. They tend to manage the 
everyday expenses required to run a household and care for dependants—the 
small choices we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Men, however, 
remain in charge of major expenditures, such as expensive animals, real estate or 
land, and [generally) education fees. The differences in asset or financial control 
are exacerbated in poor households where women have much less control or 
management of their income and assets. The rational explanations for women 
giving up decision-making power to men or for men taking such power from 
women are a matter of strong social norms that govern specialization of duties 
in the household. 

The narratives from the communities in our research predominantly put men 
in charge of the family income, including any wages earned by other members of 
the household, especially women. Women never control men’s money (or at least 
not all of it), and shared control [by men and women) of a man’s money is rare, 
but common for a woman’s money. 

Our focus groups discussed the situation of Judith and James, a fictional cou¬ 
ple living in their communities, who negotiate Judith’s decision to start a business 
and the use of its profits.Starting when Judith manages to get start-up capital 
for a small business, the focus group discussions tracked her ability to actually go 
ahead with her idea, how much support James would give her, her chances for 
success if James opposed her foray into business, and her authority to decide how 
to use the returns of the business. The discussions proved quite telling. Figure 3.6 
shows the different opinions in the focus groups about control of income earned 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


When the money is mine, I spend it on my family because we share our life. ... 
Money is for all the family. It is mine, hut my husband and I decide how to 
spend it. 

— (Rural woman, North Darfijr State, Sudan) 


Figure 3.6 Who Controls Judith's Money? 


a. 



b. 



■ Both control Judith's money 

■ James controls Judith's money 
Judith controls her money 


Note: Data from 388 focus groups. 


by Judith. Shared control of Judith’s money or Judith getting to control her 
income were the most common answers, across all locations and age groups. 

More than 40 percent of the groups acknowledged that Judith should have a 
say about her money, except rural adult men—only 27.6 percent agreed that 
Judith should control her money (compared with 45.8 percent among rural 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


115 


young adult men). A significant number of participants chose shared control over 
Judith’s business profits. A small number of groups discussed whether the couple 
should also make joint decisions about James’s money, if he started the business. 
The predominant view preferred that James control his money over sharing con¬ 
trol with Judith. 

The first impression of fairness and women’s control in figure 3.6 is deceiving. 
A little probing by the discussion facilitators into how the shared decision¬ 
making process operates revealed that men’s opinions carried greater weight in 
most decisions about Judith’s income, even when repc')rted as shared control. And 
among the 64 groups that account discussing the reverse situation, where the 
business was owned by James, women and men both were much less likely to 
share control over James’s money. 

When it comes to major expenses, the process is similar: women in the study 
were almost never solely in charge of these decisions. Even when women 
reported that they had autonomy to decide how to use their income, they still 
followed the directions of a man. More often than not, women’s accounts of their 
independent decision cited compromises reached with their husband or partner. 
On the whole, there is overwhelming evidence, reported by both women and by 
men in a number of communities [showing no specific regional or country pat¬ 
tern), of how little autonomy women actually exercise when it comes to their 
own assets and income. 

Men and women participants justified male control over all earnings and 
assets belonging to the family or belonging to the women in the family by refer¬ 
ring to traditional customs [some of which are religious) and equally traditional 
entitlements attached to the head of the household. For example, in three of the 
communities in Papua New Guinea, men claimed to control assets on the basis 
of tradition or custom: “It is the man who dominates, who owns everything.” One 
of these communities has a matriarchal tradition, but even there men are per¬ 
ceived as the natural heads of households, although “women are financial con¬ 
trollers” and “the bosses.” When it comes to making certain decisions, the 
women’s tradition-bestowed power does not hold. Women “don’t sell anything 
because women’s place is in the house.” Men from this Papuan matrilineal com¬ 
munity asserted that the husband has a large say in the use of money earned by 
his wife. To them, James as head of household was endowed with the entitle¬ 
ments and responsibilities associated with that role, and they overrode even the 
traditionally recognized lead role of women in their community. 

There is little distinction between being a man and having authority. A good 
husband has the biggest voice and the final say over any decisions for managing 
women’s income and assets. The Judith and James scenario prompted a group of 
women from a village of Sumadija District, Serbia, to present these situations: 

-There would be bloodshed if she [the wife] spent the money by herself When I 
received some money, 250,000 dinars, we put the money in one place because my 
husband said so. If my husband had received the money, he would have made the 
decision himself He is my husband, he is the boss, he is the man. 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


-[This is] an example that is applicable to the majority of us here. Some men are 

cunning and manipulate their women in a nice, slick way and others pound their 

fists on the table to get their way, but the end result is always the same. 

But this automatic authority may also be detrimental to men, who are expected 
to provide all necessities, buy big things for the house, and always pay because it 
makes them the man of the house. This expectation remains in effect, even if lost i| 
employment, poor local economic situations, or lack of skills prevent men frcrm i 
fulfilling this role. 

Sometimes it is less about explicit dominance, despite men always having a 
say. A careful look at what the women in all 20 countries said reveals that many 
men genuinely welcome cooperation and shared opinions, but only if they do not 
affect household balances. In Hung Yen District, Vietnam, when asked if Judith 
can decide alone how to spend her money, one woman noted, “She can decide 
how to use her money, but she needs to consult her husband. Otherwise, her 
relationship with her husband will be negatively affected.” Decisions about their 
money are, for women [unlike men], part of the primary considerations for keep¬ 
ing family harmony and balance. “The money can be mine, but the moment I 
need to do something for the family, I need to have him also decide on [how to 
use] my money. Sometimes we women do this, not because we think it is right, 1 
but simply because you need the family relations to keep going well,” said a 
woman from Zabibu village, Tanzania. 

Some women in the study referred to traditional norms to rationalize their 
lack of power: “According to our tradition, the biggest things are not controlled 
by women. Also, women cannot buy and sell anything in our village”; and 
“according to the culture of our community, women do not do business, so of 
course women alone cannot do business in our village” [women in Naw Da, 
Afghanistan). In a semi-rural community of Ngonyameni, South Africa, women 
described a tradition mixed with patriarchy: “This is a very patriarchal commu¬ 
nity. We believe that men are the heads of the households and they make all the 
decisions. This is also a traditional community, so the man has a final word in 
any decision regarding the household. It does not matter if Zodwa [Judith) 
worked for that money; she cannot decide alone how to use it.” References to 
decision-making power and control over assets, as one of the rights of the head 
of household, were heard repeatedly in communities in Africa, India, and the 
Middle East. 

In a rural community of Ngonyameni, South Africa, a mix of cultural tradi¬ 
tion, men’s reputations and respect in the eyes of the community, and a sense of i 
marital duty combined to justify male control over assets and income. Its tradi¬ 
tion supporting unequal control of assets was first based in magical-religious 
elements. The villagers defended the impossibility of women sharing ownership ' 
of the house they live in with their husbands with their belief that “his ancestors 
have lived in that house, so the land belongs to them.” A woman cannot own a 
house because “she left her ancestors when she got married, so it is her husband’s 
ancestors [in his house] that watch over the family. If she claims the house is hers, ■ 


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it might bring her misfortune.” Only after the death of the husband is a woman 
allowed to take control of the property. 

In Ngonyameni everything belongs to men. Women take their husband’s sur¬ 
name as a sign of becoming his property and their assets also get a new owner, 
whether they are brought into the marriage or generated after. “You may buy 
livestock on your own, but the purchase is in your husband’s name, and that gives 
him respect in the community.” Women are not only barred from ownership but 
“some women have to tell their husband about every penny they earn.” 

By and large, women are economically dependent for everything, including 
necessities, even if they bring assets to the marriage. Furthermore, in some sample 
communities, the institution of marriage also meant that women are transferred 
to the husband’s family as property. A man in Liberia challenged whether a 
woman can own property since she is part of the household assets: 

She can get property, but she can’t own property. For example, if her brother gives 
her a cow, it is hers. But before she sells it to someone else, she must consult the 
man (brother or husband) and the man must agree. Even the woman herself is your 
property. Tbe only reason she is respected is because she is a human being. 

Finally, community pressure to conform to expected behaviors can be the most 
effective method to keep a woman (or put her back) in her rightful place. In a 
community in Vietnam, if Hoa (Judith) makes her own decisions about spending 
her money, the local women’s association will visit and explain to her that 
women are supposed to ask their husband’s opinion before deciding on the 
spending, even though it is her money. They will remind her of the Vietnamese 
saying: “Couples living in harmony have strength to displace the Eastern Sea.” 

Pocket Money 

Not everything acts as a constraint, although it may seem like it. Even under 
restricted conditions described by the focus groups, women are usually allowed 
to handle everyday expenses independently, as long as they purchase inexpensive 
household items for household consumption—nothing that will increase the 
women’s bargaining power or their voice in the household and supersede men’s 
authority. Women are often accused of bothering their husband if they ask him 
about minor needs. 

At this level of decision-making, norms are slightly more flexible and women 
find ways to exercise some degree of autonomy. More than a few women in the 
study were able to set aside money occasionally and did not tell their husbands 
or refused to surrender control over it. Indeed, women were recognized as wiser 
money managers than men by a men’s focus group from the Dominican Republic 
in several different discussions, echoed by a (Tchien District) Liberian man who 
admitted that “some men are good managers, but women are better. A man can 
decide to do whatever he wants with his money if he is a rich man; if he is less 
well off, he should consult his wife on how to spend his money because she is 
more likely to prioritize household expenditures.” These men saw themselves at 


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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


high risk of spending the money on themselves and falling into the bad husband 
category. 

Men’s tendency to squander their income outside the home was a recurring 
problem and may underUe the perception by the focus groups that women are 
better managers. Both men and women in widely diverse countries in the study 
recognized that men spend too much of their earnings on alcohol, women, and 
gambling, while women use their [earned] money to sustain the household. 
Evidence of differences in expenditures has been widely documented, proving 
that women favor investing in children. This preference partly relates to social 
norms, which imbues women with greater knowledge of children’s needs due to 
women’s traditional gender roles. Women’s control of income and assets is also 
important for their children’s well-being.^^ The motives behind men’s spending 
on alcohol have been less researched, but they appear to be related to demands to 
assert their masculinity in the eyes of the community, as much as an escape from , 
living up to the hegemonic masculinity model or gender role prescriptions.^^ 

The focus groups again brought up men’s private consumption of income in 
relation to control over household finances. “Most men will spend money on i 
mistresses and gambling, expenditures that will not be discussed with the wife” 
[adult man, Paro, Bhutan]. “A man does not provide any money to his wife when 
he wastes money on drinks. He spends a lot of money on alcohol and then starts 
asking the wife to get money from her father” [adult woman, Velugodu [Andhra 
Pradesh], India]. Even the fictional James was matter-of-factly described as 
spending the profits of his [or Judith’s] entrepreneurship on partying by a man 
from Comendador, the Dominican Republic. 

On rare occasions, women actually manage the entire family income with 
their partner’s consent, much like this woman in Serbia: “My husband receives 
his salary and gives it to me. He does not carry money with him, and 1 pay all the 
bills. He never asks me how I spend the money.” Other women reported some 
awareness of their rights that led to some level of control or that associated 
autonomy with effort. Women in Eiji, India, Sudan, and the Dominican Republic 
felt that, if Judith is the one who makes her business succeed without James’s 
help, she has the right to decide alone how to use her money. The idea of bestow¬ 
ing the right to decide on women is a sign of attitudinal change challenging the 
norm of sole male control of financial decisions in the household. Chapters 4 and 
5 present more evidence of women actually acting upon these views of their own 
entitlements. 

Moving Up and Forward 

Even when women’s right to decide is recognized, women are still not always able 
to decide alone or may not opt for selfish consumption. When women have access 
to earnings or assets, they tend to include others in their decision-making more 
often than men. Even the women in the study cannot easily detach themselves 
from their household roles and responsibilities as mothers and home-makers.^^ 

Justifications for how responsibilities and entitlements in households are dis¬ 
tributed, however, appear to be changing in some of the sample communities. 


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While some women and most men accepted traditional customs and norms for 
asset control (the rights of heads of households and husbands, and rights handed 
down by ancestors], other men and women saw a need to alter them and referred 
to changes that have already taken place, such as inheritance laws that include 
women or the benefits of women generating and managing their own income. 

Once women accumulate wealth—or their family does—they also seem both 
to accumulate decision-making power and to gain access to larger assets. Women 
in less dire economic circumstances, and certainly women with more indepen¬ 
dent economic means, have more control over their assets and earnings than 
poorer women, even it women’s autonomy is tightly restricted in other areas of 
their lives. Poorer women more frequently require permission from their hus¬ 
bands to use their own money, as attested to by women in Boyina Bagh, 
Afghanistan. In Sigatoka, Fiji, as family finances ease, women often gain more 
control over income from agricultural products and small livestock and poultry, 
for example, and eventually ownership, control, and decision over land. 

Women’s right to self-determination is starting to be recognized by the 
women and men in the focus groups, even when autonomy and control of money 
they earn remains elusive. “I respect her and her right to start her own business,” 
said a man from East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, “but apart from money 
for clothes, for everything else, her husband will have access to and control of her 
money.” A Vietnamese woman from Hung Yen District saw a more positive 
future: “Women’s roles have changed a lot. Women’s social relations are the same 
as men’s. Both daughters and sons get the inheritance. However, the sons are 
given larger inheritance than daughters, even though it is stipulated by the law 
and the court that daughters and sons should have the same inheritance.” 

When Does Choice Mean Agency? 

In the strategic decisions covered in this chapter, women have gained some 
autonomy to decide about their education, jobs, marriage (who and when), and 
reproduction, although they still are permanently challenged not to neglect their 
domestic duties. Men in the study are showing more willingness to consider shar¬ 
ing power (if not actually share it] and to release some control over household 
decisions to women. Shared decision-making means men have to bend constrain¬ 
ing norms, but it introduces a better decision-making process into their house¬ 
holds. And as these men and women change, they transform the traditional 
playing field in their communities. In the domestic sphere, the women are 
stealthily altering traditional definitions of duties and responsibilities associated 
with their expected roles, which may induce change in the norms or make them 
more flexible. 

The evidence from the different communities in our study shows that it is 
young women in urban areas who are more overtly acquiring a greater sense of 
self-determination and agency in the decisions discussed here. Within persistent 
constraints, they are beginning to envision a future similar to young men: educa¬ 
tion, independence, greater financial autonomy, and shared responsibility for 

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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say? 


their family. Adult men and women in rural areas, have a less positive view of the 
changes occurring in their societies, both given the difficulties they have faced or 
because of uncertainty from challenges to their traditional power roles and iden¬ 
tities. However, perceptions and voices are changing, and they mark real move¬ 
ment in women’s power and freedom. Whether women make more traditional 
or modern choices [box 3.1), the goal is to make their own decisions with fewer 
constraints. 

Kabeer [1999] sees the ability to exercise choice in terms of three inter-related 
dimensions: resources, agency, and achievements or outcomes. Resources, the 
contexts, and conditions that the men and women in the study have to make 
choices vary with each decision, as they have clearly described. Women’s acquisi¬ 
tion of education, income, and jobs, and access to services—resources—act as 


Box 3.1 Choosing Not to Change Things 

Agency does not always entail making progressive choices. Conservative choices are made in 
at least two scenarios: (a) where options are limited or where restrictions and conservative 
choices increase people's status or improve their general well-being, and (b) where true 
commitment to the norm is not strategic. 

An example of a conservative choice that has been interpreted multiple ways is the use of 
the veil among Muslim women. It has been argued that religious and social ideals and norms 
are not always (or even usually) rejected by women as oppressive, but are sometimes appro¬ 
priated and creatively used to increase their agency and achieve positive goals (Mahmood | 
2001). Adolescent girls and young women in West Bank and Gaza refer to restrictions on their i 
mobility in ways indicating that it constrains rather than enables their agency. But wearing the 
veil in public is also an apparent strategic choice to gain a degree of autonomy, even though it 
appears constraining. 

Although the focus groups did not discuss it extensively, enough comments gave evidence 
that the veil is accepted both as a matter of course and as a passport to greater mobility and 
autonomy. Adolescent boys and girls in communities near Rafah (West Bank and Gaza) both 
agreed that it is easier for"veiled girls to go to school"or move around in public. In a neighbor¬ 
hood of Rafah Governorate, the adolescents also reported that girls work while going to school 
to. help support their families, but it is more difficult if they do not wear the veil. Making a 
progressive choice (in this case, not to wear a veil) affects their ability to earn income and 
reduces their agency. 

The evidence for a strategic use of the veil, however, does not rule out adherence to the 
norm from true commitment to religious or moral values. The statement by an adolescent girl 
from Rafah that "we have to be veiled, it is our religion" should be taken seriously and not 
explained away by reference to social conditions. Truly conservative choices that are not a 
response to restrictions were rare in our study, but this may be the result of the emphasis in the 
research on the conditions that enable or limit agency, rather than on values and religious 
ideals. 


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preconditions to exercising their agency. The actual ability to make strategic 
decisions, however, does not always follow immediately, but as women’s horizons 
and options broaden, so does their ability to envision a diflerent life and act upon 
it—and achieve it. 

But aspirations that lead to action do not take place in a void. As Ray (2003) 
notes clearly, individuals still fall back on their local reference frameworks as 
guidance. They make comparisons with their peers and qualify their own situa¬ 
tions relative to community references, which shape their aspirations. From their 
communities flows information and how to interpret it; communities identify 
role models and produce “others like me.” Aspirations for economic mobility and 
power are contextual and depend on how much mobility one perceives in a local 
community and in society. 


Notes 

1. This is akin to Amartya Sen’s (1985) notion of "functionings,” which range from basic 
concerns (e.g., being healthy, having a good job, and being safe) to more complex 
states (e.g., being happy, having self-respect, and being calm). The freedom to achieve 
functionings obviously has an instrumental value, but it also has intrinsic value to a 
person’s quality of life. 

2. Chapter 4 in World Development Report 2012 analyzes available evidence from around 
the world on this relationship. 

3. Fiji, the Dominican Republic, Bhutan, India, Burkina Faso, Sudan, West Bank and 
Gaza, and the Republic of Yemen. Togo adolescents were also interviewed but the 
data were not included in the figures in this section. 

4. The highest returns on education are recorded in low-income and middle-income 
countries when looking at income levels. When looking at regions, Latin America and 
the Caribbean region and Sub-Saharan Africa region see the highest returns. The low¬ 
est returns are in non-OECD European countries and the Middle East and North 
African countries. 

5. See World Development Report 2012 (World Bank 2012, 169) for estimates on the 
probability of women who need permission to get medical care based on demographic 
and health data. 

6. See Field and Ambrus (2008), Goldin and Katz (2002), and Pezzini (2005), for 
example. 

7. Our survey did not collect specific data about the education level attained by the 
participants, just their comments on, and their perceptions of levels reached in their 
communities. 

8. Participants in urban and rural communities in South Africa, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, 
and Togo also echoed this perception. 

9. “Adaptive preferences,” as described by Sen, respond to the material conditions of 
individuals’ lives. Nussbaum argues that these choices are not real expressions of 
agency, but a simulacrum of choice. 

10. World Development Report 20/2 refers to these groups as severely disadvantaged popu¬ 
lations or regions. 

11. World Development Report 2012. 


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12. World Development Report 2012 (World Bank 2012, 217-19) has a section with this 
same title, which deals with the differences in time use between men and women and 
their impact on women’s labor market outcomes. It notes that gender differences in 
time use patterns stem from the gender division of roles and responsibilities inside a 
household. 

13. Brickell (2006) and Ginsburg and Rapp (1991) provide a good overview and 
summary of these issues in sociology and anthropology. 

14. In feminist work, and in sociology more generally, sexuality usually refers both to the 
individual’s practices and identities, as well as to the ideologies, discourses, and social 
arrangements around it (Holland et al. 1998; Walby 1990). 

15. Diez Minguela (2011), based on United Nations’ data on world marriage. 

16. For example, see research by Breierova and Duflo (2004) in Indonesia; Dayioglu, 
Kirdar, and Tansel (2009) in Turkey; Long and Osli (2008) in Nigeria; and Perelli- 
Harris (2006) in Ukraine. 

17. Anderson (2007) notes that asset transfers per marriage can be as high as six times the 
annual household income in South Asia (Rao 1993), and four times the annual house¬ 
hold income in Sub-Saharan Africa (Dekker and Hoogeveen 2002). 

18. Indian rupees. 

19. Rao (1993) shows how dowries in India increase in amount for higher-ranked castes 
and when the groom is more educated. 

20. These opinions came from Naw Da, Afghanistan; Labasa and Sigatoka, Fiji; Koudipally 
Mandal and Velugodu, India; Sungai Puar District, Indonesia; Briceni District, 
Moldova; and Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. 

21. In the Boyina Bagh, Afghanistan, focus group, the young women claimed "not know¬ 
ing about this question because it is a private issue between husband and wife.’’ 
Participants from the Red Sea area of Sudan reacted to the question with surprise and 
anger, and refused to continue the conversation until the subject was changed: “No 
almighty but Allah, you disbelievers! This comes from God, and we have nothing to 
say about that.” 

22. A review of this evidence can be found in Buvinic, Das Gupta, and Casabonne (2009). 

23. A detailed analysis of the phenomenon of “missing girls” can be found in chapter 3 of 
World Development Report 2012 (World Bank 2012, 120-27). 

24. See chapter 4 in World Development Report 2012 (World Bank 2012) for a detailed 
review of the evidence. 

25. The exercise was conducted with young adult and adult men and women. 

26. In studies of countries as varied as Brazil, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mexico, South Africa, 
and Turkey, women’s spending on goods that benefit children has prompted the intro¬ 
duction of social policies, such as conditional cash transfers. See Schady and Rosero 
(2008) and Doss (2006). 

27. See Lemle and Mishkind (1989), Holland et al. (1998), and Barker (2005). 

28. These and other accounts should be complemented by economic research on wom¬ 
en’s expenditure preferences, as well as anthropological research. Miller’s (1998) 
study on shopping shows that housework and homemaking are strong sources of self- 
identity and solidify family bonds in working- and middle-class English homes. Miller 
argues that everyday shopping and management carry meaning, among other reasons, 
because they maintain crucial relationships and allow women to positively mold 


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family members. The assumption is that male and female members of the household 
adhere to and follow a moral scheme of what is good to instill in others, using provi¬ 
sioning and housekeeping to do it. This is not normally recognized because action in 
the domestic sphere is considered, by default, as inferior to action in the public sphere. 


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I 



. .i 






PART III 


Empowerment 


In our 97 sample communities, we invited men and women to reflect on the role 
of power and freedom in their lives. What does it mean to be a powerful woman 
or a powerful man in their community? How can a woman or man become more 
powerful and free? How can they lose power and freedom? 

Our aim is to systematically record the factors that women and men in the 
study saw as helping increase their feelings of empowerment. As outlined in the 
introduction, agency and empowerment are contested concepts with different 
definitions and perspectives of their importance to processes of social change. 
Kabeer (2001, 19] defines empowerment as the “expansion in people’s ability to 
make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied 
to them.” We do not hold the focus groups to this benchmark. In fact, we set 
aside the academic terms of agency and empowerment and instead explore their 
dynamics with the focus groups by turning to local understandings of the more 
common terms of power and freedom. 

The capacity of women and men (or groups] to pursue goals, their agency, 
may or may not achieve the desired outcomes. Local context also significantly 
influences their pursuits. “Clearly a process of empowerment is incomplete,” 
explain Ibrahim and Alkire (2007, 9], “unless it attends to people’s abilities to act, 
the institutional structure, and the various non-institutional changes that are 
instrumental to increased agency.” In our exploration of the gender dimensions 
of exercising agency, we explicitly look at the interplay of three dynamics that 
may lead to a sense of greater power and freedom, or empowerment: 
(a] the behaviors or actions that men and women associate with exercising 
agency, (b] the conditions and trends in their local structure of opportunities, and 
(c] the change in gender norms as part of those structure of opportunities. 

Social norms reproduced across institutions feed into a gender system 
that demands that men and women act in certain ways, although it also provides 


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Empowerment 


/ am free and I have some power; my partner has the same: sovereign decisions 
are freedom and power. 

—Urban man, neighborhood oFOlzstyn, Poland 


a sense of identity and a position in the community structure. (Whether this is 
equal or favorable is a different matter.) As such, this system, and how it is chang¬ 
ing, determines what is possible to imagine and to achieve. We also look at the 
enabling local conditions that make it possible to pursue and realize aspirations. 

We use two tracks to assess factors and processes gleaned from the focus 
groups’ understanding of empowerment. We first parse out women’s and men’s 
perceptions of the different factors that increase their power and freedom, and 
the role that gender norms play in their interpretations of what creates empow¬ 
erment (chapter 4). In chapter 5, we explore the local context in more detail and 
how it influences the processes and outcomes of agency, especially those ele¬ 
ments over which individuals may have no control, such as market forces, local 
governance, and civic action, and the norms for women’s inclusion and leadership 
in these public spaces. 

Overall, in our sample, women more often than men reported becoming more 
empowered and spoke of gaining more influence and freedom of action in either 
their domestic or public roles. Men’s changes in their sense of power and free¬ 
dom, however, were far more tightly tied to their role as providers and to the 
health of the local economy. 

Our assessments of the focus groups particularly reveal that women’s sense of 
empowerment and the factors shaping it can be very different from men’s, even 
in the same community. This discrepancy in large measure has to do with gender 
norms. Although we observe many new norms slowly taking hold, when review¬ 
ing all the responses in aggregate, important gender differences still persist in 
aspirations and in perceptions of^ and access to, opportunities. These differences 
were reflected in the men’s and women’s evaluations of their capacities to act 
and empowerment trends for their own gender. As Kabeer (1999) and Mahmood 
(2001) point out in different ways, empowerment does not always or necessarily 
result from deviations from the norms. While it is true that complying with 
norms may lead to increased status, and that this may be antithetical to auton¬ 
omy, the actual outcome depends on the context of women’s social relations and 
individual histories. Alkire (2009, 4), in a discussion of approaches to assessing 
agency, explains that, “people who enjoy high levels of agency are engaged in 
actions that are congruent with their values.” A strong desire for harmony 
between values and behaviors is common in local understandings of what brings 
power and freedom, and the values often embody strong gender dimensions. 

In chapter 5, we connect the men’s and women’s assessments of trends in 
empowerment for their own gender to data gathered about local markets and 
state and civic institutions. From this, we note that the perceived empowerment 

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Empowerment 


129 


outcomes, trends in local norms, and access to opportunity structures do not 
necessarily move together. Changes in one domain may not be matched by 
changes in others, with gender norms often lagging. In general, we often observed 
that communities with more dynamic economies stimulated a greater sense of 
empowerment in men and women and greater relaxation of norms. But even in 
the most supportive of contexts, women and men pursued local opportunities in 
ways that did not conflict with their gender-prescribed roles, responsibilities, and 
conduct. 

Given the great diversity of individual perceptions and local conditions, we 
aim first to identify the main pathways, or combinations of factors, that lead to 
increased senses of power and freedom in the sample communities.' In a 
nutshell, we find that a clearer path emerges for urban women than rural 
women. Urban women perceived more extensive gains in their power when they 
control major assets, are free (or freer) from domestic violence,^ acquire greater social 
capital, and have a supportive local opportunity structure. For instance, the agency 
of women in the study benefited from the presence of active women’s organiza¬ 
tions that tap into partners and resources outside their localities. Urban women 
also benefited from residing in neighborhoods where gender norms are more 
relaxed, markets are stronger, and public services more accessible. 

For rural women in the sample communities, identifying causal factors associ¬ 
ated with empowerment was more difficult. This likely reflects the diverse 
barriers that village women confront in order to attain more autonomy for them¬ 
selves. Like women in the cities, however, the model suggests that rural women 
do somewhat better when they have supportive local opportunity structures, enjoy 
more mobility, and face less domestic violence. These factors are more present in the 
sample communities marked by deeper poverty and little human development.-^ 
A fourth factor affecting rural women’s capacity to increase their agency is scarce 
labor opportunities for men in the formal economy. 

Urban and rural men’s gains in power are largely dependent on economic 
growth and the existence of and access to jobs. In fact, the explanatory forces behind 
perceived expansions in female empowerment hold no meaning when applied to 
men. Male pathways are narrower and dominated by local and national economic 
conditions. 

The identified pathways do not present a comprehensive picture, but are a 
starting point for chapters 4 and 5, which delve deeply into perceptions of 
agency and freedom, and how inequalities inherent in gender norms and gender 
power relations create different sets of opportunities and challenges for women 
and men. A woman who seeks greater power and freedom of action in her life 
may constantly have to negotiate norms that discourage her from taking initia¬ 
tive and modifying expected gender-typed behaviors. For example, norms of 
femininity prescribe submissive behaviors; however, women speak of the need 
for acting boldly and taking risks in order to pursue aspirations, such as earning 
an income outside the home. And if success in these initiatives means a woman 
faces greater possibilities of domestic violence, then it renders her gains in eco¬ 
nomic independence and assets useless. By contrast, factors that propel men 


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Empowerment 


upward are clearly in line with accepted definitions of masculinity and man¬ 
dates for what it means to be a good man. Men’s access to opportunities is less 
dependent on their own efforts than women’s because being a good provider 
and being powerful and free are widely accepted traits of men. Fundamentally, 
women’s rising empowerment in a community—and their eventual transforma¬ 
tion of expected feminine attributes of domesticity, docility, and obedience—is 
a process that ushers in significant change in gender norms, power relations, and 
institutional inclusion. 


Notes 

1. In order to learn more from our dataset about women’s empowerment, we invited 
sociologist Charles Ragin to collaborate with us in investigating causal factors. We 
used qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to track each community’s changes in 
empowerment on a “ladder of power and freedom” (explained more fully below) as a 
configuration of traits or aspects, rather than representing aspects as separate, indepen¬ 
dent variables, which neutralizes and thus sacrifices context. QCA ensures that it is 
not just single variables acting independently that drive outcomes hut combinations 
of causal conditions (Ragin 200(), 2008). This book’s appendix on the methodology 
has more details on this exercise. 

2. These findings are consistent with broader surveys, such as Agarwal and Panda (2007), 
which show that women’s ownership of major assets can be a protective factor. 

3. As measured by the Human Development Index of each country (UNDP 2011). 


References 

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K. Basu and R. Kanbur, 455-74. Oxford University Press. 

Ibrahim, S., and S. Alkire. 2007. “Agency and Empowerment: A Proposal for Internationally 
Comparable Indicators.” OPHI Working Paper 4, Oxford Poverty and Human 
Development Initiative, Oxford, U.K. 

Kabeer, N. 1999. “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of 
Women’s Empowerment.” Development and Change 30: 435-64. 

-. 2001. “Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment.” In 

Discussing Women's Empowerment: Theory and Practice, 17-57. Sidastudies 3. 
Stockholm: Novum Grafiska AB and Sida. 

Mahmood, S. 2001. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some 
Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival.” Cultural Anthropology 16 (2): 202-36. 

Ragin, C. 2000. Fuzzy Set Social Sciences. Chicago, IE: Chicago University Press. 

-. 2008. Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond. Chicago, IE: Chicago 

University Press. 

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2011. Human Development Report 
2011: Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All. New York: UNDP. 


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CHAPTER 4 


What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


Men and women in the study reported that quite similar factors fuel their 
empowerment. They spoke most often about how their own economic initiatives 
help them gain more power, followed by positive attitudes and behaviors, then 
education and skills. Wfien we compare discussions by women and men from the 
same locality about what triggers empowerment, however, significant gender 
differences often emerge. Understanding how local gender norms are evolving 
locally is often critical for making sense of why women and men may perceive 
sharply different causes of and trends in empowerment. 

Indeed, one of the findings from our study is that urban women perceive 
significantly more gains in their power and freedom over the past decade than 
any other group sampled. This is consistent with the rural and urban differences, 
noted in previous chapters, in relaxation and change in gender norms. The 
reports by urban women, moreover, starkly contrast with urban men’s sense of 
loss of power and freedom over the same time period and the challenge that this 
presents to their compliance with expected models of masculinity. The findings 
also suggest that gender norms may be more important than generally recognized 
to understanding the capability of local-level institutions to serve the public 
good, and hence the pace at which communities are able to shift to more inclu¬ 
sive and prosperous development. 

Step by Step: Climbing the "Ladder of Power and Freedom" 

To guide our analysis of the complex factors and processes that underpin how 
and why individuals are able to gain power and freedom—become more 
empowered—we draw on a concept of agency as “the ability to define one’s goals 
and act on them”[Kabeer 1999, 438]. If successful in their pursuits, individuals 
may both increase their agency, or capacity to negotiate and make decisions, as 
well as their power and freedom to control resources and shape institutions that 
affect their lives (Narayan 2002]. Yet, not all women’s and men’s initiatives to 
exercise agency are successful. Empowerment is conceived as a product of the 
interaction between, on one hand, individuals and groups seeking to exercise 


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132 


What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


The moment that you know that you can do things by yourself and not have 
to depend on a man is the moment you begin moving up. I see some women 
being beaten by their husbands every day. When you talk to them, they say 
they are married and cannot leave their husband. These [women] will never 
climb out of their situation. They will stay at the bottom. 

—Urban woman, Emputa village, Tanzania 


According to the tradition of our village, women cannot move about freely. But 
old women who are on step 2 or step 3 (the top step) can go out and about in 
the community to the homes of relatives, friends, and neighbors. 

—Village woman, Naw Da (Parwan), Afghanistan 

At the top of the ladder are people who feel confident about their lives and 
their future. They are well placed to realize their life's goals and ambitions. 

—Urban man, Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh), India 


agency and advance their interests, and on the other, changes to their local oppor¬ 
tunities structures.’ In our dataset, for instance, we observe how changes in local 
opportunities seem to exercise strong effects on aspirations and agency, but 
sometimes these effects vary markedly by gender. 

Before moving into the analysis of the different factors and dynamics 
associated with power described by the focus groups, we briefly review the data 
collection method, which is important for making sense of the findings that 
follow. The field instrument used was entitled, “ladder of power and freedom,” 
which builds on similar instruments in other studies of poverty and economic 
mobility.^ The ladder exercise was conducted only with the 194 adult focus 
groups (one group for each sex in the 50 urban and 47 rural communities). 
The focus groups initially spent some time building their ladder to establish a 
common understanding, or framework, for assessing the dynamics of gaining and 
losing power in their communities (see box 4.1). 

Facilitators introduced the topic by asking participants to identify the char¬ 
acteristics of the most powerful and freest women or men of their neighbor¬ 
hood or village. (Men described men and women described women.) Similarly, 
they discussed qualities of the least powerful and least free women (or men) 
of the community. With this information, they defined the top and bottom 
step of a ladder, and the facilitator annotated the key traits for each rung on a 
large piece of paper in front of the focus group. Intermediate steps were then 
determined by the participants.’^ While complex and multidimensional, the 
ladders do not completely describe all the power structures for all the differ¬ 
ent types of women (or men) who reside in a study community. Some of 


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133 


Box 4.1 Challenges with Measuring Social Change from Below 

Analyzing and comparing complex processes of social change, which necessarily transpire 
over time and across diverse contexts, is inherently a great research challenge. We approached 
this by building on qualitative research traditions of learning inductively from local people's 
own interpretations and understandings of what power and freedom mean and how they lose 
or gain them in their lives. Issues of recall and context-specificity, however, are two key 
concerns that must be addressed in such analysis. 

First, asking individuals to recall situations always introduces the risk of getting partial 
information or an interpretation of events that the individual has developed to make sense of 
their current condition (Dempsey 2010). Some of our questions about agency required study 
participants to identify factors and recall conditions affecting agency for their own gender a 
decade ago. Yet, the natural course for individuals is to remember most clearly those actions 
that they made happen themselves and that best explain their circumstances now. Such 
processes mean that our focus groups at times might tend to downplay the relevance of 
seemingly unimportant events (in the course of pursuing goals) or wider environmental 
factors (which also influenced their choices) over which they often feel they have little control, 
such as weather, birth caste, presence of roads, access to services, etc. 

Second, this study applied a rapid and relatively standardized method of constructing a 
"ladder" to facilitate comparative analysis of men's and women's understandings of agency 
across their diverse contexts. Yet, we recognize that our method just provides a general picture; 
much of the nexus of agency and changing gender norms is deeply contextual to each specific 
location and is more clearly delineated with techniques that feature small samples, revisits, 
extended observation, and detailed life-story tools. Without question, dynamics of change are 
better captured through longitudinal techniques that involve tracing social change across 
generations in specific localities. Examples of insightful multigenerational investigations that 
provide a valuable perspective on how gender and poverty dynamics operate in specific local¬ 
ities or population groups include Perlman's (2010) work in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; 
Moser's (2009) study of a neighborhood in Quayaquil, Ecuador; Epstein, Suryanarayana, and 
Thimmegowda's (1998) two villages in India; Fishburne Collier's (1997) study of a Spanish 
village; and Lomnitz's (1977) study of a Mexican shantytown. 


the information provided is more stylized than based on actual women and 
their characteristics. 

After each group built their ladder, the discussion shifted to how someone can 
climb up each step to the next, and what factors may push someone down the 
ladder. Finally, participants were requested to identify how they would distribute 
100 women (or men) on the different steps to represent the current distribution 
of power and freedom among community members of their own gender. The 
same sorting exercise was repeated, but this time the focus groups were asked to 
imagine where these same 100 individuals would have been found on the ladder 
a decade ago. A completed ladder, with steps, dynamics, and distributions of 
power for two points in time (2000 and 2010) produced a rough roadmap 

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What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


of a community’s social structure for that gender, and whether and how this 
structure is perceived to be changing. 

Each ladder is highly influenced by local characteristics; however, commonali¬ 
ties can be discerned among the different ladders in the traits of the different 
steps and in the reasons for movement up and down. Also, the general mobility 
trends reported by the focus groups can be compared. For this purpose, we 
synthesized the numerical data from the ladder sorting exercise into a “mobility 
index” that equals the difference between a ladder’s mean step now and the 
mean step 10 years ago. We will return to this index after highlighting common 
characteristics of the ladders. 

Defining the Steps on the Ladder 

To illustrate the exercise of creating a ladder of power and freedom, we turn to i 
one created by the women’s focus group from a traditional mountain town of ' 
6,000 in Ba’adan center, the Republic of Yemen. According to the women from 
this community, “enjoying a lot of freedom means that women can express their 
views and move about freely, but only within certain limits and under the 
authority of men and the customs, traditions, and social norms.” In this town, for 
instance, seclusion practices—such as the requirement that male guardians 
accompany them if they travel any distance from their neighborhood—restrict 
women’s movements. 

The traits associated with the most powerful women included being married 
to powerful or wealthy men in the town, who may be members of the local I 
council or sheikhs. A powerful woman in Ba’adan center may or may not be 
well educated, but her sons and daughters go to school, a few all the way to 
university. These women have money and can own jewelry, houses, land, and cars, 
although “men have a say in how women handle [their money] and often its 
disposal is for the benefit of the family.” A small number of these powerful 
women work outside the home, but “only in a government job as a teacher or 
nurse,” where they do not have to interact with the opposite sex and potentially 
risk their reputation, safety, and family honor. The majority of Ba’adan center’s 
most powerful women do not have economic independence and their influence 
is mainly derived from their spouses, family name, or their adept management of 
household affairs. 

At the bottom step of the Ba’adan center ladder, women cannot express their j 
opinions “and are totally dependent on men for everything.” They are very poor, | 
illiterate, and may have to work both “in and outside the house” to make ends 
meet. If they work outside the home, it is a sign of great economic stress in their 
households and they take low-status jobs as domestic workers or vendors. Some 
on the bottom step may earn an income at home from embroidery, hairdressing, 
sewing, and other activities. These women may have some more freedom of 
movement, but their husband’s economic situation is not good and it is reflected 
in the entire family. 

The Ba’adan center women’s focus group identified four steps on their ladder. 
For the women on the middle steps, their assets and influence are more limited 


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135 


than those on the top step, but they enjoy some decision-making inside their 
households. They may also have some assets, thanks to inheritances, or work for 
pay within the limits of what is acceptable for women, for instance, selling goods 
to women door-to-door, teaching, nursing, or holding government jobs. 

Much like the general traits of the ladder steps in other communities, women 
in Ba'adan center attached great importance to certain behaviors and attitudes as 
signs of power. Women on the highest step have “good morals and good reputa¬ 
tions, have the experience and ability to solve problems, and have a lot of money 
and authority to express their opinions and [give] advice.” Ba’adan center women 
on the lowest step, by contrast, have “weak personalities” and “are very tired. 
Their lives are full of suffering, deprivation, and daily misery.” 

In Ba’adan center, as in most of the communities in the study, the top rung of 
the men’s ladder sits “higher” than the women’s, and men’s status is more tightly 
linked to their public roles and economic might. In Ba’adan center, these men are 
traders, elected officials, sheikhs, court employees, and “they get everything they 
want.” Men on the bottom step are described as “tired. They work only for one 
or two days a month and are responsible for an entire family.” In most communi¬ 
ties, the men with the least power are jobless or rely on insecure daily wages. 

To measure how things have changed in Ba’adan center, women put twice as 
many women on the top step (about 40 percent), compared to a decade ago. 
They indicated that women are moving up the ladder as they become better 
educated and find jobs; their husbands and children also have better jobs, which 
brings them status. Although they perceive they have greater power and freedom, 
these women’s lives remain primarily in the domestic sphere. 

The men of Ba’adan center reported the opposite trend about their agency: 
their boUom step doubled from 25 to 50 percent of the community’s men over 
the past decade. The men spoke about no longer being able to work in other Gulf 
states or the United States, and the lack of stable jobs for workers in their town. 
And unlike the women, these men saw a large decline in the share of men on the 
top step over the last decade.’' 

A Representative Ladder 

When we examine the general characteristics of the ladder steps, we see impor¬ 
tant consistencies across genders and contexts. Focus groups mentioned traits 
associated with economic assets and occupational status far more often than any 
other traits. Figure 4.1 provides highlights of the major characteristics that 
emerged in the ladder discussions. 

To the men’s focus groups, occupation and position of authority in that occu¬ 
pation mattered intensely to their perceptions of the stature a man commands in 
their community. The men on the top step of the ladders are at the pinnacle of 
local farming, business, poUtics, religious institutions, and sometimes civic groups. 
In addition to authority roles, they frequently described the most powerful men 
as very wealthy, commanding great respect, able to do whatever they want, and 
possessing excellent social skills and networks. Women attached an economic 
role to power on their ladders almost as much as men do. Even in traditional rural 

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Figure 4.1 Representative Ladder of Power and Freedom (Both Women's and Men's) 



• Significant economic assets 

• High-status occupation 

• Harmonious marital and family life 

• Strong leadership, social skills, and 
networks 

• Great freedom of action 

• Great self-efficacy and independence 

• May or may not be well educated 


• Some economic assets 

• Stable occupation 

• Harmonious marital and family life 

• Some freedom of action 

• Generally self-confident 

• Has social networks 

• May or may not have some education 


• Scarce economic assets 

• Jobless or insecure occupation 

• Stressful marital and family life 

• Uneducated 

• dttle freedom of action 

• Excluded, voiceless, oppressed 

• Suffering, hopeless, no self-confidence 


communities, a woman on the top step may receive rental income from inherited 
land or have a nursing job; in urban settings, however, the most powerful women 
are doctors or lawyers. Women and men with little power do not work for pay 
or work in low-status jobs, for instance, as a domestic servant it a woman or a 
daily-wage hauling job if a man. 

For both men’s and women’s ladders, education levels associated with power 
can be quite mixed, and this likely reflects the limited schooling opportunities 
that were available to most adults in our sample. Focus groups largely attributed 
a stable and agreeable family life to all but those on the bottom step. In addition, 
they attached great importance to conduct and attitude in their discussions of 
power and freedom. For example, men and women on the top step were 
frequently seen as driven, with strong leadership and social skills, while those 
with little power were more often described as unhappy, lacking confidence, 
withdrawn, or voiceless. Such assessments reflect what each community consid¬ 
ered desirable values and behaviors to be admired and respected. 

Where women’s and men’s ladders differ most is the important status that 
women derive from their gender-ascribed household roles; however, as gender 


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What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


137 


norms change, these markers of status are also changing. In more traditional com¬ 
munities, focus groups often positioned women with many children on the top 
step and considered them influential due to their reproductive success; other 
focus groups, however, considered large families an attribute of the bottom step. 
Women may gain the top step if they have a powerful spouse or a strong voice 
in their household, even though, as in Ba’adan center, their physical mobility may 
be restricted. But in contexts where gender norms are relaxing more quickly, 
women on the top step may have important civic or political positions and 
enjoy great freedom of action. 

Because women derive status from both domestic and productive roles, they 
arguably enjoy more sources of power on their ladders than men. In an urban 
community near Zorzor, Liberia, a woman on the top step may achieve that rung 
because she has 9 or 10 children [and “many more grandchildren and relatives”), 
because she is a community leader, or because she runs a big farm. Still, in the 
highly gendered playing fields of power, women’s status remains subordinate to 
men’s. The positions of authority, assets, and occupations that women on the top 
step command are almost always of less significance than the men’s (on the 
top step) in the same community. 

A large proportion of the participants assessed themselves as being on the 
middle steps, where their capacity to negotiate their interests is more in flux. 
Some women in Tanzania noted that: 

Most women are on the middle or second step. They can provide some income for 
their families, but depend on their husbands and their children. Their houses are 
always clean, but they do all the housework by themselves, with assistance from the 
children. Although they are the link between their families and other families, they 
have little time to concentrate on friendship because they are too busy trying to 
manage their household and family. They go to civic meetings, but they rarely speak 
out. They work hard, but a lot of their work is on the household farm or plantation, 
or at small tables where they tend small retail businesses in front of their houses. 
TTiey are hardly employed. They get little cooperation or help from their husbands. 

Before turning to the reasons why individuals can rise and fall on the ladder, it is 
useful to show the comparative findings on the change in positions of the 100 
representative women and men on the ladders. Figure 4.2 breaks apart the data¬ 
set by urban and rural focus groups, with the first set of bars on the left displaying 
the share of communities where both women and men reported at least some 
upward movement over the past 10 years—or gains in power and freedom for 
their gender.^ With 55 percent of rural communities and 42 percent of urban 
communities showing men and women advancing up the ladder, this is the most 
common pattern in our dataset, which we called “twin climbing.” But women’s 
and men’s views are not always in sync. In 36 percent of the urban communities 
and 17 percent of rural communities, women are climbing the ladder, but men 
register zero or negative mobility. Declines in power and freedom by both 
sexes—“twin falling”—and men outperforming women are more prevalent in 
rural communities than in urban ones. 


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What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


Figure 4.2 Outcomes of All Men's and Women's Ladders in Urban and Rural Communities 


w 0.60 -| 



Tv\/in Women Twin falling Men 
climbing climbing, climbing, 

men falling women falling 

■ Rural (n = 43) ■ Urban (n = 49) 

Note: Shares display outcomes from men's and women's ladders in 49 urban and 43 rural communities (or 184 ladders In all). 
Four women's and eight men's ladders did not register any movement, so were classified with the falling set. The five 
Sudanese communities are not included in this analysis because the women's focus group did not conduct the sorting 
exercise of 100 women at the end oftheir ladder discussions. 


Importantly, the notion of “mobility” here and in chapter 5 refers to gaining or 
losing power and freedom—in other words, movements up and down the ladder 
of power and freedom—and not to the more traditional applications for assessing 
economic mobility. While there is significant overlap and emphasis on economic 
well-being, focus groups in this study did not completely associate accumulation 
of wealth or high-status occupations with great power. For example, elders, 
scholars, and reUgious or civic leaders of either sex may be poor, but they also are 
awarded great authority and respect by virtue of their benevolent deeds, wise 
counsel, or compassion for others. Alternatively, downward mobility may ensue 
from perceived misbehaviors and misconduct, some of which have a strong 
gender component. In rural Kim Dong District, Vietnam, women said loss of 
power can occur if women spend money “without discussing it with the husband” 
and make “the husband think he is unnecessary.” We explore these and other 
triggers for climbing and falling in the next section. 

Figure 4.3 also breaks out urban and rural samples, but instead presents the 
average rates of mobility on the ladders of the men's and women’s focus groups. 
The “mobility index” captures the difference between the mean step now and 
mean step 10 years ago, and portrays the general direction and extent of change 
in power and freedom perceived by a focus group over the past decade. We find 
a striking contrast between urban women and men, with women seeing 
significant change in their power and freedom and men, on balance, reporting 
loss of control. The same dynamic does not translate to rural communities, where 
women and men show a more “twin rising” trend on average.® 

From the accounts by the women’s focus groups of what drives their sense of 
empowerment, urban women [and to a lesser extent, rural women) perceived 
that they have more voice and choices in their lives, and more space to negotiate 
and pursue goals. We expect urban women to feel more empowerment than 
rural women because cities offer more anonymity and freedom from confining 
norms, as well as more institutional outlets for exercising agency. Stronger trends 


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139 


Figure 4.3 Average Mobility Index of Men's and Women's Ladders in Rural and Urban 
Communities 



Note: Results from 189 focus groups reflect the mean step today versus the mean step 10 years ago. The 5 Sudanese women’s 
ladders are missing from this analysis because they did not conduct the sorting exercise. 


can also be felt in cities from universal education, promulgation and awareness 
of gender laws, investments in public services and infrastructure, the spread of 
communication technologies, and other forces. Women in the focus groups 
talked about how their lives are changing for the better, although exercising 
agency does not always require them to challenge and change gender norms. 

Men did not register as much empowerment as women, which is to be 
expected, given that they are more accustomed than women to being in positions 
of power as a traditional norm of masculinity. Yet, many urban men reported 
feeling a loss of power and freedom to shape their lives. As shown throughout 
this study, urban and rural men commonly expressed difficulties with adapting 
to changes in their local structures ot opportunities—and gender norms play an 
important role in constraining their agency and flexibility to adapt. From men’s 
accounts, it is clear that, in their eyes, opportunities and other factors shaping 
aspirations and capacities to act are not equally distributed, and few available 
opportunities are considered suitable for them. 

Perceptions of Factors Shaping Agency 

This section presents the leading factors mentioned by focus groups for gaining 
or losing power and freedom in their communities. As with the ladder traits, the 
gender dimensions of the mobility factors are more remarkable for their similari¬ 
ties than for their differences. Nevertheless, the strong role that gender norms 
play in mobility processes will become more evident in the sections to follow, 
where we probe more deeply into and compare women’s and men’s ladder 
discussions in specific contexts. 


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What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


But you cannot climb up from the very bottom. There is no way that you can 
even learn how to use money, if not only to drink. You cannot go to school 
anymore because there is no way you can understand what they teach you. 
So, once down, you are doomed to stay there. 

—Urban man, Nsenene village, Tanzania 

The weak woman can work as a warden serving coffee, at a sewing factory, 
or as a secretary, nurse, or teacher. The economic situation that forces her to 
work can make her strong. 

—Village woman, Dirbas, West Bank and Gaza 


Figure 4.4 Urban Upward Mobility Factors 



Occupational Behavioral and Education and Marital and Social networks 
and economic psychological training familial 


■ Urban men ■ Urban women 

Note: Data from all 100 men's and women's urban focus groups. 


Both men and women explained that they gain more power and freedom in 
their lives through occupational and economic initiatives that mainly include 
getting a better job and sound financial management. Among the four groups 
(men and women, urban and rural), economic activities account for about one- 
third of the factors mentioned (see figures 4.4 and 4.5^). In Ba Dinh District, 
Vietnam (a neighborhood of Hanoi), one way to move up the ladder is if “a man 
dares to borrow a big loan from different sources to open a business.” Women in 
the same neighborhood said that what helps them climb the ladder is “getting 
promoted,” “using money saved from a government job to buy land,” or “being 
successful in the stock market.” Across the focus groups, women and men 
not only stressed earning income, but also careful budgeting, borrowing. 


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141 


Figure 4,5 Rural Upward Mobility Factors 



Occupational Behavioral and Education and Marital and Social networks 
and economic psychological training familial 


■ Rural men ■ Rural women 


Note: Data from all 94 men's and women's rural focus groups. 


and management of their finances to build savings. In rural Nagari Bukik 
Batabuah, Indonesia, women can climb, “but it doesn’t happen quickly. We first 
have to save the wages that we receive from working in someone else’s field 
before we are able to move up to a higher level.” 

Individual behavioral and psychological factors were the second most often 
mentioned factors that stimulate upward climbs, except by rural women (who 
mentioned educational factors slightly more). Both women’s and men’s explana¬ 
tions routinely indicated that ladder ascents require courage, sincerity, humility, 
service, temperance, spiritual guidance and growth, good reputation, hard 
work, consistency, positive mind-set, honesty, willingness to change, goal-setting, 
avoidance of alcohol abuse, utilization of individual talent, rejection of corruption 
or bribery, and optimism. In a village of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea, 
some of the factors that allow men to climb the ladder included “the drive to start 
a business,” a good character, and a “dream of being successful.” A sense of self- 
efficacy and purpose—or capacity to aspire (Appadurai 2004)—were deemed to 
be vital: “A woman has to believe in herself^ break through her fear, gain more 
self-confidence. Then everything becomes easier” (a woman, Justynowo, Poland). 

More generally, the focus group narratives about behavioral and psychological 
factors revealed that both women and men fervently believed that their own 
positive mind-sets and self-confidence, as well as how they conduct themselves 
and treat others, matter greatly when it comes to gaining power and freedom. For 
many, power is associated with being respected by the community. Urban women 
in Zorzor, Liberia, warned that “money can’t carry you up here [to higher steps], 
only how you talk to people and help pull them together.” Focus groups 
mainly associated desirable behaviors and attitudes with moving up the ladder. 


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What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


and undesirable or antisocial behaviors and attitudes with falling down the ladder. 
But these divides sometimes blurred: focus groups, on occasion, assigned move¬ 
ments both up and down the ladder to acts of selfishness or corruption. 

As with the ladder traits, the role of education and training in gaining power 
and freedom is not as straightforward as conveyed in the figure because the 
frequencies of mention in the focus groups include contradictory reports that it 
is both necessary and unnecessary for upward climbing. While it is central to 
aspirations that younger generations described for their own lives, more than half 
of the adult focus groups neglected to mention education as a factor in upward 
mobility, while others often qualified its importance: 

Women on the highest step are supposed to be [educated], but the reality is that 
any creative, diligent, and aggressive woman is capable of influencing others. They 
can be community leaders. There are educated women in the lowest class, so educa¬ 
tion alone is not enough. Women should have other skills. (Village women’s focus 
group. River Nile State, Sudan) 

In Suakoko District, Liberia, the men advised that “education is needed, but in 
our area, people can do without”; and in .lakarta, Indonesia, the men explained 
that “some uneducated people have become big bosses. The important things are 
capital and ambition.” Nevertheless, a strong cross-section of groups highly val¬ 
ued education and, where available, adult literacy and vocational training 
opportunities. 

Ladder descents most often ensued from business failures, job losses, bad 
investments, and poor financial management (figures 4.6 and 4.7). Urban men 
and women stressed these risks more than their rural counterparts. The second 

Figure 4.6 Urban Downward Mobility Factors 



and economic psychological familial activities networks 

■ Urban men ■ Urban women 


Note: Data from all 102 urban focus groups. 


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143 


Figure 4.7 Rural Downward Mobility Factors 



Occupational Behavioral and Marital and Illegal Social 

and economic psychological familial activities networks 


■ Rural men ■ Rural women 


Note: Data from all 92 rural focus groups. 


cause of descents, behavioral and psychological factors, can be triggered by 
dishonesty, prejudice, lying, conceit, wasteful spending, extravagance, corruption, 
cheating, jealousy, selfishness, laziness, infidelity, loss of trust, fights, disregard for 
the rules, and excess alcohol consumption (by men). These concerns were more 
often raised in the countryside and, again, it may be that behavioral factors are 
less prominent as a cause of losing power in urban groups because of the greater 
anonymity in urban environments. 

Overall, factors related to marital or familial relationships were less frequently 
mentioned as triggers for climbing and falling. As expected, women mentioned 
the role of their spouse or other family members in their gains and losses of 
power more than men. “Marrying into a wealthy family” and cooperative couples 
and harmonious households bring clear advantages. In Zabibu village, Tanzania, 
for instance, a woman explained that to move up in her village a woman “needs 
to get a good and understanding husband, who allows her to go into business and 
engage in educational activities.” Women from a more urban area (Nsenene 
village) in Tanzania agreed: “You can divorce a hopeless husband and marry a 
good one who can put you higher on the ladder.” Dialogue and agreement 
between the couple were key for women from Saylla District, Peru, when it 
comes to leaving the bottom step. 

Meanwhile, falling down the ladder can be triggered by any number of house¬ 
hold problems, such as marital or family discord; widowhood; family dissolution 
or divorce; too many wives where polygamy is practiced; marrying “down”; sons 
who are unemployed, leave home, or engage in vices; and inability to bear chil¬ 
dren or bearing too many children. Rural men mentioned these hazards as often 
as rural women, and urban women much more so than urban men. In rural 


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What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


Martynice, Poland, and elsewhere, women reported that being divorced or 
cheated on “is worse than his death.” But it is urban women who displayed the 
greatest relative concern for marital and familial triggers. In urban Lambayeque 
Province, Peru, a woman explained that “when you separate from your husband, 
assets must be divided and this weakens you.” 

Nonfamily social networks are the last of the main factors in movements on 
the ladder [see figures 4.4 and 4.5), accounting for about one-tenth of the 
upward factors mentioned and less so for falling. In some cases, these connections 
can be instrumental in securing other determinants, such as economic gains, as 
suggested by a man from Tewor District, Liberia: “Make friends with people at 
the top step and ask for land.” In other cases—mentioned by women—connecting 
with other women (informally or in formal organizations) can open information 
flows or build self-confidence and aspirations. In Old City of Hebron, West Bank 
and Gaza, “a weak woman can go up [the ladder] by hanging out with a strong 
woman”; in Umlazi township A of Durban, South Africa, a woman “must involve 
herself with other women” in order to climb. In the refugee camp visited in 
Al Fashir, Sudan, women said they can become more powerful through literacy 
and “training courses, workshops, and seminars, and interacting with active 
women leaders in society.” In National Capital District, Papua New Guinea, 
getting involved in church activities helps women increase status and move up 
from lower rungs. Earning a good reputation through charitable works or taking 
a leadership role in self-help groups are sometimes mentioned as stepping stones 
for women and men alike. By contrast, women indicated that isolation from their 
community, self-help groups that lack cohesion, and “bad friends” who expect or 
owe loans can cause ladder descents. 

Combinations of Mobility Factors 

In surveying the narratives about movements up and down, two processes stand 
out. First, the bottom step of powerlessness is widely seen as the hardest of all to 
leave. Second, rather than describing one factor as more important than another, 
most focus groups conveyed that moving up the ladder requires mobilizing 
combinations of factors. 

Those on the bottom step are widely perceived to face the toughest climb 
of all. Not only is great effort and sacrifice required, but some assistance from 
others or great luck are often seen to be needed as well. And these may well be 
less in one’s control. In Umlazi township of Durban, South Africa, men say that 
“It is very difficult for a person to move out of step 1 because the majority of 
them are not educated at all. Maybe unless someone wins the lottery jackpot.” 
Or, in University Quarter of Hebron in the West Bank, escaping step 1 takes 
“credibility, luck, and people’s support.” In a neighborhood of Monrovia, 
Liberia, women explained that “those that are down [the ladder] are not able 
to send children to school” and so their children, when they become adults, are 
less likely to be able to help them move up. In Olsztyn, Poland, the women’s 
group thought that because those on step 1 “have nothing to invest,” some of 


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145 


the only ways tor these women to move up the ladder were to “win the lottery,” 
a “wise wedding,” or “organized crime.” Scaling subsequent steps, by compari¬ 
son, was seen to be more doable because each step potentially brings more 
earning power, assets, self-confidence, knowledge and skills, reputation for good 
work and honesty, and so forth. 

In addition, the five upward mobility factors described above are seen to be 
interlinked, and it takes purposeful combining or sequencing of them to produce 
real gains in power and freedom. The introduction to part III mentions how their 
interconnections help open up pathways of empowerment and how some factors 
are necessary conditions for others to have an actual impact in triggering upward 
movement on the ladders. These pathways are not the same for men and women. 

A man from Umlazi township B of Durban, South Africa, married three 
factors—related to better management and generation of economic resources 
and self-discipline—as necessary for leaving step 1: “If people work hard, save 
their money, and do not waste it on alcohol, they can manage to move up to the 
next level.” In Floresti, Moldova, the men similarly noted that a man on step 1 
can get to step 2 if he “finds a job or some possibility for earning money,” but he 
also needs to “stop drinking and start taking care of his family,” and to get “a good 
wife.” In Paro, Bhutan, one man said that in order to climb, “a man has to be 
hardworking, reliable, and good at heart; be able to learn from others and help 
others; avoid indulging in alcohol; take good care of his family; not have extra¬ 
marital affairs; and be positive in life.” Numerous accounts about men needing to 
stop indulging in vices and focus on their family obligations to be a good provider 
revealed the extensive problems of jobless and deeply frustrated men in this 
dataset. In the Umlazi township B focus group, the men lamented how their lives 
have changed, compared to a decade ago: “Men had work before, now they have 
no job opportunities.” 

Women’s combinations differed from men’s for many reasons, including 
different gender norms and different positions and status in the communities and 
households. While economic factors featured broadly for women as well as men, 
women were less likely to mention problems with antisocial vices and more 
likely to speak about a need to become less passive and submissive, although 
these traits are often valued traits in a woman. In Lambayeque Province, Peru, a 
woman can increase her power and freedom but “she needs to take more initia¬ 
tive, take risks, begin a business and commit to it, take out a loan, be responsible 
and careful, and set goals.” 

In urban Ba Dinh District, Vietnam, women said that rising above step 1 may 
be possible if, among other measures, their husbands stopped beating their wives 
and if the women are able to get a loan to open a business “and improve the family 
economy.” Domestic violence is a strong sign that women have little power and 
freedom. Economic initiatives are generally seen as ways for those on the bottom 
step facing difficult household circumstances to forge more voice and autonomy. 

Climbing up the ladder, moreover, still means women have to tend to their 
household responsibilities even as they mobilize diverse assets and capabilities to 
fuel their ascent. In Firestone District, Liberia, women can become more 


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What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


powerful if they are extremely industrious and patch together different initiatives 
to build assets, but they cannot neglect their domestic duties: 

If you have a small farm, you make the farm bigger. If the crops come up, you sell 
the produce and make whatever business you want. But if you wash for one person, 
you can just as well wash for two or three people. In doing these things, you should 
tie your stomach [eat less] and ask your family to help you take care of some of 
your children. 

Similarly, escaping the bottom step for women from urban Shirabad Ulya [Kabul 
Province), Afghanistan, also involved a flurry of initiatives that imphcitly require 
carefully navigating old and new norms for women’s conduct; 

Women must work hard and follow precisely the decisions made by the men 
household members. They must not quarrel with the men. Meanwhile they 
should consult their friends and get information and assistance from them. 
They must send their children to school, but must be careful about the expenses. 
They should avoid any extra, unnecessary spending. Whenever they have free 
time, they can go meet their friends. 

Or, in the less traditional setting of urban Paro, Bhutan, a woman can climb up 
by being successful in business and by “being more responsible, emulating other 
people who work hard, and consistently working hard themselves; having a 
positive attitude and a desire to learn; being ambitious; and not indulging in bad 
habits.” Yet, like elsewhere, a Paro woman’s household role and domestic rela¬ 
tionships may also be ingredients in her efforts to gain power, such as aspiring to 
be a “husband and wife [who] encourage each other and give moral support,” 
or having “educated and independent children.” Across diverse contexts, women 
reported climbing their ladders as they gain more voice and autonomy in their 
domestic roles; although, overall, women stress their own economic initiatives 
more than any other single factor as a reason for gaining power. 

Downward mobility is also linked to intersecting causal factors that can send 
individuals spiraling out of control of their lives. The nexus of hardships men¬ 
tioned often feature job loss or financial mismanagement that may then trigger 
undesirable or antisocial behaviors and marital or familial problems. According to 
a man from urban Emputa village, Tanzania, “you only have to drink a lot, hang 
out with women a lot, and sleep in bars and guest houses, and that will be the 
end of your power. There were rich men here who once had boats with engines, 
but now they are at the bottom begging.” In Chiclayo, Peru, women particularly 
mentioned how a woman on the top step can fall down the ladder if she misman¬ 
ages her business, makes a bad investment, or has problems with workers; 
although, women can also lose status in the village due to difficulties with their 
marriages or children. 

In the next two sections, we look more closely at the gender dimensions of 
agency processes in an urban [Jaipur) and a rural community [Malangachilima), 
both with especially strong twin climbing. In each locality, women’s and men’s 
groups reported that many of them are gaining power. Unfortunately, twin 


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climbing to the extent reported in these two communities is rare in our sample, 
but these contexts are nevertheless uselul to examine more closely because they 
provide valuable insights into what strong agency looks and feels like for both 
sexes. They also clearly reveal the gender differences in the factors that underpin 
agency. A third section then assesses an urban community with a polarized 
mobility pattern, where the women perceived significant empowerment, but men 
reported falling down their ladders. Taken together, these localities display how 
men’s and women’s mobility on their ladders is interdependent, and the significant 
(albeit different) influence ot gender norms and local institutions in their agency 
processes. We take up the latter themes more systematically in chapter 5. 

Moving Up the Ladder in the City 

.laipur (Odisha), India, a growing town of 7,000, used to be mostly farms and 
pasturelands a generation ago.^ With rapid urbanization, the town’s level of 
poverty has plummeted over the past decade from 60 to 20 percent. The women 
of .laipur have good jobs as teachers or administrative staff in private schools, as 
workers in tailoring and other industries, and as owners of big and small shops. 
The town’s men work in daily-wage agricultural jobs, but there are also good jobs 
available in construction, stores of all sizes, travel agencies, computer shops, and 
the government. 

The women’s focus group from Jaipur described women on the top step of 
their ladder as having significant visibility in civic roles in their community and 
enjoying greater authority in their households. These empowered women partici¬ 
pate in local meetings and interact with important community leaders. They also 
make substantive decisions related to their children (such as sending them to 
school, paying tuition) and do not have to seek permission from their husbands 
for everything: “She can go out of the house at will.” At the other extreme, Jaipur 
women on the bottom step are depicted as having no education or economic 
independence, little voice, and no aspirations for themselves, and are secluded 
and isolated in their homes. (The full list of characteristics of women’s top and 
bottom ladder steps from the Jaipur women’s focus group are in table 4.1.) 

With five steps on their ladder, the women in Jaipur provided a fine-grained 
analysis of the mobility factors and extent of changes shaping their lives. The 
group reported that 10 years ago nearly half the women of their community 
were on step 1, the bottom step, with little power and freedom. For women to 
escape the bottom step, the focus group suggested that they must aspire to get 
ahead and develop an attitude for “self-growth,” improve their networks, and gain 
information and exposure by “meeting with other women frequently,” and trying 
to have more say in their household. These are difficult hurdles for women on 
step 1, where gender norms for women’s physical mobility and expectations of 
obedience and submission are at their strictest. 

At the top of their ladder, they placed 25 percent of the women in their 
community on step 5, up from the respectable 15 percent of a decade ago. 
Women said that they can climb to the top step if they gain experience 
“dealing with community elders,” learn more about mobilizing resources inside 


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What Drives Agency? What Crushes It? 


Table 4.1 Top and Bottom Steps of Women's and Men's Ladders of Power and Freedom in Jaipur (Odisha), 
India 



Women’s top step 

Women's bottom step 

General attitudes 

• Elas good understanding of others' needs 

• Does not interact or mingle in community; 

and behaviors 

• Is the community's face (represents the community) 

stays at home 


• Elas more exposure and is mobile 

• Is not very expressive 


• Is soft spoken and approachable 

• Lets husband make all decisions, 


• Is patient and tolerant 

economic, future of children, marriage of 


• Can adjust and accommodate to everyone 

children, education of children 


• Is determined and courageous 

• Is not very responsive 


• Takes initiative and responsibility for community 

• Feels (internalizes) that they cannot 


concerns 

understand anything because they are 


• Is trusted and looked up to by other women 

illiterate 


• Elas awareness of community development issues, 

• Has no awareness of or interest in 


but is not well educated 

participating in community issues 


• Elas vast experience and is seen as a guardian of the 

• Does not have decision-making power 


community 

for self 


• Able to speak in front of 10 people or to outsiders 

• Has high aspirations for children's 


• Elas good relationship with others and does not 
have vested interest 

• Turns cold shoulder to the women in community 

education 

Education 

• Elas an education 

• Is illiterate, did not complete primary 


• She completed 10th grade with honors 

education 


• She completed a nursing course in Cuttack 

• Worked eight years before marriage 

• Has husband with university degree (BSc or MPhil) 

• Is less literate than husband 

Jobs and specific 

• Involved in community groups and is responsible 

• Does not have a job 

community 

for looking after financial management of those 

• Mostly does housework 

responsibilities 

groups 

• Sometimes acts as midwife for poorer communities 
free of cost 

• Has time to devote to community causes and 
concerns 


Family and 

• Has relationship with spouse where they trust and 

• Sees husband as the ultimate authority in 

household 

respect each other 

making economic decisions 


• Husband doesn't stop wife from being active in 

• Husband is also in business 


civic organizations or holding positions in the 

• Submitscompletely to husband's 


community 

decisions and demands 


• Aspires to raise daughters to be independent 

• Does not need permission from husband to go 
anywhere 

• Has equal voice in household's economic decision¬ 
making for small and large things 

• Reveres her husband 

Savings and 

• Saves through a self-help savings group or a chit 

• Has very little savings 

borrowing 

fund 

• Has only one member of family earning 

habits 

• Has received a loan from a microfinance institution 
(MFI) and repaid it 

• Has a bank account in her name 

income 


Men's top step 

Men's bottom step 

General attitudes 

• Has money 

• Has low income 

and behaviors 

• Has political power 

• Donates money to the needy 

• Has no bargaining power 

Education 

• High school or university graduate 

• Minimal or no education 


table continues next page 


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149 


Table 4.1 Top and Bottom Steps of Women's and Men's Ladders of Power and Freedom in Jaipur (Odisha), 
India (continued) 



Men's top step 

Men's bottom step 

Jobs and specific 
community 
responsibilities 

• Is helpful to the community 

• Lets community members consult him and ask 
advice for free 

• Donates land for community development works, 
temple, school 

Is a daily wage worker 

Family and 

• Has politically oriented, supportive family 

• Has a large family 

household 

Political power 

• Motivates and grooms wife to take open seat 
reserved for women on the ward council 

Is politically active and effective; can get work done for 
the community and individuals 

• Has many friends in the same economic 
situation 

Financial power 

Has their own business 

Has no savings 


and outside the community, and are “ready to provide a helping hand” to other 
women. These very same triggers are also on men’s ladders, but these women’s 
interactions with elites and local activism are more groundbreaking for their town. 

The men’s focus group in Jaipur paid most attention to assigning substantial 
economic and political roles to the men on the top step. Men on the bottom 
step, in contrast, have little earning power and education: “They are daily labor¬ 
ers and they have to fight every day to earn their livelihood.” Unemployed men 
are also commonly found on bottom steps, but Jaipur’s economy is unlike many 
in our sample because men can find sufficient jobs that they deem appropriate 
for them. 

The men’s ladder also features five steps, but most of the movement happens 
in the middle. The majority of men, on step 2 at the beginning of the past decade, 
rose to step 3, and the share on step 3 changed from 40 to 60 percent of the com¬ 
munity’s men. Due to education, better savings, and the assistance of self-help 
groups, many men in Jaipur on step 3 have been able to find better livelihoods 
over the past decade, working in the government or the private sector, or even 
running their own profitable businesses. The men’s bottom step grew slightly, but 
stayed close to one-third of the community, similar to the women’s bottom step. 

Men attributed their bottom step and reasons for falling to troublesome 
behaviors that include “losing the trust of or not being accountable to” their self- 
help groups, not saving, drinking too much, and “not letting their women work.” 
This last statement, implying that women’s economic participation affects men’s 
mobility processes, is a quite strong signal that Jaipur is undergoing real change 
in gender norms, not just relaxation of compliance with gender norms, as more 
women participate in the local economy. 

Both the women and men of Jaipur, like many other communities in the 
study, spoke of the strong mutual support that defines the marital relationship 
on the top step. Women appreciated the presence of trust among these couples 
and the husbands’ support for women’s civic activities; the men’s ladder specifi¬ 
cally mentioned, for example, how powerful men groomed their wives to take 
advantage of the gender quotas for local council seats. No such harmony 

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What Drives Agency? What Crushes it? 


and cooperation are mentioned on the bottom step. The women warned that 
they could fall back down to step 1 if they “completely surrender to [their] 
husbands’ authority.” 

The women in Jaipur are visibly gaining power and freedom, and in this 
process are changing some of the prevalent gender norms in the community. 
The most powerful women enjoy authority positions both inside and outside the 
home and have gained a significant presence in the formal economic, political, 
and civic institutions of their town. The men are moving up, too, and see their 
education, financial management, and self-help groups playing important roles. 
This simultaneous movement likely helps ease the way for local women to exer¬ 
cise agency and for men to accept the women’s new conduct and roles. 

Moving Up the Ladder in the Countryside 

Malangachilima, Tanzania, is a large village of nearly 7,000. The village chairper¬ 
son, a woman, estimates that poverty fell in the 2000-10 decade from perhaps 
70 percent to 30 percent. She attributes most of the village’s rising prosperity to 
the recent introduction of modern farming methods. Farmers are raising cattle 
and growing sunflowers, ground nuts, and grapes. Donated equipment for making 
sunflower oil stimulated the rise of a successful community cooperative for 
village men and women. The village also hosts a busy bimonthly market that 
draws buyers and sellers from across the area. Some of Malangachilima’s smaller 
farmers have been through difficult times, however, due to swings in the area’s 
economy, drought, and Rift Valley fever. And the village still has important devel¬ 
opment challenges. Most school-age children attend the local primary school, but 
only half go on to secondary school. There is no electricity, and most residents 
obtain their water from local stand-pipes. 

When building their ladder of power and freedom, the women’s focus group 
in Malangachilima described their most powerful women with these attributes: 

• She works very hard. 

• She harvests a lot. 

• Most of her children go to good schools; some go even to schools in town or 
farther away. 

• She completed primary and even secondary school. 

• She is a leader; she gets involved in politics beyond the village. 

• She has a good husband, but does not always have to have a husband. 

• She can be rich and own cattle and land. 

In stark contrast, they label the woman on step 1 “a slut,” who “hardly has a 
husband; she simply gives birth to children who have different fathers. She 
is poor: she hardly owns a cow, possibly has a chicken. She has no land, unless it 
is inherited land.” She also is “confined at home ... [and is too] poor to buy any¬ 
thing useful for herself She never speaks in public.” Polygamy is common in the 
village, which is especially disadvantageous for women on the bottom steps 
because their husbands are stretching resources across multiple households. 


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Powerful women take good care of their families, their husbands, and children. 
They are also very hardworking. A powerful woman will never say that there 
is nothing in her sock [store for food]. 

—Village woman, Malangachilima, Tanzania 


What is surprising about Malangachilima is that the women felt that they 
have almost entirely escaped the agency-crushing bottom step. While they 
assigned an astonishing 95 percent of women on the bottom step just a decade 
ago, now only 5 percent are on this rung. On step 2, where most of the women 
now reside, women have their own farms and other ventures, most of their chil¬ 
dren are in school, and they worry much less about hunger. 

Women said they can climb their ladders through hard work, leadership in 
local groups, saving money, buying cattle, and visiting their children in town and 
coming back “with good ideas.” One woman explained that children send money 
from town, which has helped some villagers “become very powerful because 
nothing is disturbing them anymore and they have become busy in the com¬ 
munity thinking about development issues.” Although “nothing disturbing them” 
might be interpreted in different ways, women and men reported decreasing 
incidences of domestic violence. Also, once their children grow up, no longer 
require care and school fees, and start to give back, women generally have more 
time and resources to focus on themselves and become active in their commu¬ 
nity. To move up to the top of their three-step ladder, women need to “make 
their mind big” and “think how to change for the better.” In reflecting on their 
growing strength, a woman declared, “I think that we have very few very hope¬ 
less women because we know what work means now, not like 10 years back 
when we were just following men. And in fact, we have many women now who 
are very powerful, manage their own lives, and are not at all dependent on men.” 

By comparison, Malangachilima’s men have not been as successful at escaping 
the bottom step, but a good share are nevertheless on the move. The men esti¬ 
mated that their bottom step has shrunk from 85 percent a decade ago to about 
50 percent still trapped there. The men on step 1 are described as letting their 
wives do everything for their families’ needs and, when harvest comes, “he steals 
the crops. He is a lazy man.” The leading reasons keeping men on the bottom 
rung [or descending to it] are too much drinking and too few assets “because the 
few cows they have are shared among the many wives they married.” The village 
men also mentioned that these men on step 1 are the only decision-makers in 
their households and they may be “cheating a lot.” And if you give a man on the 
bottom step a loan, “forget about getting it back.” These men are “never trusted” 
and “will never have good ideas.” 

With half of the men in the village seen to be powerless and still on step 1, 
the Malangachilima community should be facing extensive hardship. Yet, the 
men’s narratives also spoke of progress for the many men moving up. They 
described the men on the top step [which has grown from 5 to 20 percent of 


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the men) as commanding great respect in the community, helping others in need, 
having very strong family lives, and being good providers. For the share of village 
men who are finding ways to gain power, the men identified several factors: gain¬ 
ing confidence from their own education and educating their children, attending 
training courses and developing entrepreneurial skills, obtaining financial assis¬ 
tance, and improving their networks to get advice from other knowledgeable 
people who are considered powerful. One man elaborated, “Ten years ago, we 
rarely left the community; mingling with other people was very minimal. That is 
why our community was backward.” In later discussions about community orga¬ 
nizations, a man reported that now they have various outlets to obtain loans to 
expand their farming and other ventures, and that local men gather together in 
agricultural groups, carpentry groups, and beekeeping activities. 

In fact, external groups seem to have played a valuable role in the village. Focus 
groups of younger women related that programs oftered by nongovernmental 
organizations (NGOs) encouraged them to study and raised their awareness of 
their rights. And both women and men took advantage of NGO and governmen¬ 
tal programs to mobilize their own farmer, producer, and finance groups and have 
reached out to external partners to strengthen their livelihood activities. For 
instance, a village woman noted that, “we can borrow money from our associa¬ 
tions; we also have SACCOS [savings and credit cooperatives] from which we can 
get money. ... We had World Vision here, which has been a good resource for us.” 
World Vision spent a decade working in the village and departed several years ago. 
Women and men have also rotated in and out of the local executive officer 
position. 

In sum, gender norms seemed to have transformed very rapidly in this village. 
The large majority of women and a good share of the men of Malangachilima are 
rising off their very harsh bottom steps. They both are being helped by diverse 
factors, including their own economic initiatives, greater exposure to new ideas, 
educational opportunities, and collective action. Jaipur and Malangachilima are 
more hopeful communities than most in our study. Very often we find women 
climbing, but men are mostly stuck or falling on their ladders. Very often the 
men’s focus groups are deeply discouraged by the poor condition of their local 
economy; problems of joblessness, frustration, and vices send more men tum¬ 
bling than climbing. 

Women Climbing, Men Tumbling in the City 

As noted above, the general mobility trends on the urban ladders display a 
pattern of women perceiving significant empowerment and men seeing disem- 
powerment. The forces driving this pattern mainly seem to be a consequence of 
communities in the study that have been hit hard by various shocks, which had 
heavier impacts on agency processes in our urban sample, compared to the rural. 
In a few cases where the role of shocks is less evident, men may be feeling emas¬ 
culated by their exposure to new lifestyles or ways to earn a living that have 
raised their aspirations, but they do not have the means or local structure of 
opportunities to pursue such goals. 


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A quarter ot the sample countries had been stressed by violent political 
conflict during the 10-year period of the ladders; other urban neighborhoods in 
peaceful countries reported significantly harmful effects from the global eco¬ 
nomic crisis of 2008 or other major economic shocks. Gender differences in 
responses to periods of turmoil are important for interpreting the patterns on the 
urban ladders. With the deterioration of economic opportunities, men struggle 
with identity issues as they strive to make ends meet and provide for their homes, 
often having to undertake economic activities that may damage their status or 
erode self-esteem (Schrock and Schwalbe 2009). Some men seem to become 
passive and opt for unemployment until better times. It is in these contexts 
where men’s emotional struggles—and coping strategies that involve drinking, 
gambling, drugs, affairs with other women, and marital conflict—are often 
reported by women’s and men’s groups [although these are common problems 
for men on bottom steps even where shocks have not been reported). 

Women in struggling economies, meanwhile, try their best to pick up the slack 
for their families. They begin new economic initiatives or intensify their existing 
ones, and carry their households through the difficult times. For some of these 
women, the grip of various gender norms relaxes due to the exigencies of these 
stressful periods. This relaxation, however, does not necessarily lead to a signifi¬ 
cant change in the overall climate for women’s economic, political, and civic 
participation, as occurred in Jaipur and Malangachilima. 

Ceadir-Lunga, Moldova, illustrates the polarizing dynamics of economic stress 
on men’s and women’s agency. A city of about 23,000, Ceadir-Lunga’s economy 
has been weakening over the last decade and worsened during the global eco¬ 
nomic crisis of 2008 and 2009. Focus groups conducted in mid-2010 indicated 
that many men and smaller numbers of women have become economic migrants. 
Five of the eight men in the adult focus group in this town were unemployed at 
the time of our interviews. Unlike the men, most of the local women in the adult 
focus group had jobs. And in spite of the economic situation, this group of 
women mainly saw the past decade as favorable for their agency. 

When asked about the best ways to make a living in Ceadir-Lunga, the men 
identified diverse opportunities for both sexes, from working in the government 
and the private sector, running small- and medium-size businesses, to engaging in 
wholesale and winemaking ventures. Openings for such good jobs, they 
explained, are rare and few of them have the means to start their own business 
or to access the requisite finance. Some immigrated to find work in other 
European cities, but they do not speak highly of their experiences and reported 
that the men who are still working abroad are lonely and unhappy away from 
their families and friends. 

The men also felt that women have better opportunities to get jobs in the city 
than men; local gender differences attached to the status of jobs clearly shape 
their perceptions. In response to questions about the worst ways to make a living 
in the city, for instance, the men identified digging graves and cleaning streets or 
houses; however, one of the men countered, “There is no such thing as a bad job. 
These are just insufficiently paid jobs, like watchmen, sweepers, cleaners.” 

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Yet, another interjected that men would never take a cleaning job because it is 
so poorly paid and demeaning; “A man who respects himself will never accept 
such a job.” They also said that local men would be unlikely candidates for 
administrative positions in firms. “They choose the woman [for a secretarial posi¬ 
tion] because she is more responsible and conscientious about the work she has 
to do,” one man stated. These remarks about the gender appropriateness of one 
job or the other are not uncommon in other communities. The poor returns and 
potentially strong reputational harm attached to bad jobs or women’s jobs 
[which may often be the same] seem to sap men’s resilience in the face of dete¬ 
riorating economic opportunities. 

Women in Ceadir-Lunga also mentioned struggling with the difficult 
economy, but they said this has pushed many of them into new jobs and 
expanded their income-earning role. They described the advent of more pow¬ 
erful women in their neighborhood, who did not exist a decade ago. The 
women on their top step are better educated, have fewer children, and work 
at professional jobs in the government or run their own enterprises. Some 
women have been able to launch businesses with funds that they earned 
themselves while working abroad or that their migrant husbands sent home. 
“These women are financially secure, smart, self-confident, good in business, 
but sometimes unreliable and unkind,” they explained. A few of them climbed 
up the ladder by marrying rich husbands or taking advantage of market oppor¬ 
tunities left by men who went abroad in search of better jobs. The focus group 
estimated that nearly 20 percent of the women in their neighborhood had 
pulled themselves up to the two top steps, which did not exist for them 
10 years ago. 

The much larger share of women still on steps 1 and 2 are also educated, may 
have jobs, and are raising families. Their husbands often are unemployed, so their 
households rely on the women’s income. The Ceadir-Lunga focus group esti¬ 
mated that 80 percent of the women in their neighborhood used to be on step 
1 a decade ago, but this has now dropped substantially to 20 percent. Women on 
step 2, however, may well have been compelled to take a job due to the economic 
crisis, but this has strengthened their voice. 

Men’s and women’s different coping strategies in the face of adversity affected 
their sense of agency in competing ways in Ceadir-Lunga. When we asked the 
men about new gender laws taking effect in Moldova, one of them responded, 
“Mainly nothing has changed, especially for the good.” Another elaborated, 
“It didn’t change anything because the financial situation in Moldova is very 
bad. I think that women should stay at home and take care of the family, but 
when women go into poUtics, business, and so on, it is not a good thing.” Unlike 
in Jaipur and Malangachilima, the men seemed loath to recognize women’s 
expanded and important provider roles. 

Beyond Ceadir-Lunga, economic factors also emerge as the triggers most often 
named that move individuals down their ladders. Falls can be precipitated by 
losing a business, being retrenched, losing property, losing a job abroad, going 
bankrupt, making bad investments, defaulting on loans, mismanaging money. 


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155 


dealing with national economic crises, facing war, and so forth. In rural areas, 
droughts, floods, pests, and diseases add further severe risks to livelihoods. 

In our sample, urban men seemed to struggle the most with adversity. In many 
urban communities, where men’s “good” jobs have grown scarce, they often per¬ 
ceived that women have easier access to work in certain sectors, such as service 
industries, because of the premium on “soft skills” and personal appearance. 
Whether this perception is accurate or not, it is clear that many urban men feel 
deep insecurity about their role as a provider and this is a source of great frustra¬ 
tion for them. 

The dataset also contains four economies affected by violent political conflict 
during the 2000-10 reference decade for assessing changes in power and free¬ 
dom. The gender and conflict literature is bringing to light women’s deep vulner¬ 
ability to sexual and other violence in the case of war, but it also documents how 
periods of conflict force gender norms to relax as the institutional structures that 
control them are dismantled.^ Women enlarge their public roles, but men go into 
retreat. These processes were especially on display in some of the sample com¬ 
munities in post-conflict Liberia. Women there widely saw their economic, civic, 
and political leadership strengthen in their communities, while many men 
reported feeling emasculated as they tried to recover their livelihoods since the 
war ended in 2003. Some of the men’s narratives openly identified women’s 
gains in power as challenges to their authority, if not causes for their loss of 
power. Women, on the other hand, voiced frustration at men’s inabihty to adapt 
to women’s new roles or to the changing economic and institutional circum¬ 
stances in their communities. Gender relations in these mainly urban Liberian 
localities seemed very tense. 

In Greenville, Liberia, for instance, the women mentioned that they have a 
new marketing association (established by their elected chairwoman), but the 
men are not helping make it a success. Rather, the men are leaving women alone 
to do the arduous work required to “cut palm nuts and brush on the farm.” 
Women are gaining power, but men in Greenville are falling in droves down their 
ladder. Just half of the men were on the bottom step 10 years ago, but the men’s 
group placed 90 percent of them there now. And this is how the men describe 
themselves on step 1: 

They are not working, there is no business. They cut palms and give them to their 
wives to sell so they can get food. They do the weeding and brush contracts; they 
collect kiss-me (tiny snails) to sell; they cut wood and make charcoal to sell. Any 
day they don’t work, they have no food. They live in thatched houses and have a 
junior-high school level of education. They have a fine and happy family that goes 
to church together and sits together. ... 

[Some couples have a] fighting relationship; both women and men grumble and 
fuss every day. Even today, when we have gathered for the focus group, the wife is 
asking, "Why didn’t [the man] go to the farm? Will sitting in that group give us our 
daily bread for today?” And that becomes another source of conflict between the 
man and woman today. 


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And in another Liberian town, Harper, where men also reported extensive 
disempowerment, they talked about how, since the war, women have taken over 
leadership positions at the local university and in the local market, while jobs 
that used to provide many local men with good and reliable income, such as at 
the port or with logging companies, have not been recovered. Like many urban 
communities in this sample, the men of Harper and Greenville feel voiceless and 
trapped, but women say they are finding their voice and building better and freer 
lives for themselves. 

Men's and Women's Interdependent Agency and Gender Norm Change 

The ladders highlight the fact that men and women recounted few difierences in 
what drives their ability to gain more power and freedom in their lives. They 
most often stressed economic initiatives, although they acknowledged that atti¬ 
tudes, behaviors, and education also play roles in climbing the ladders, as do 
family relations and social networks. Yet, gender norms interact with local oppor¬ 
tunity structures and individual initiatives to make processes of exercising agency 
quite different in reality for men and women. Women seem able to climb their 
ladders in good times or bad, and claim more empowerment whether they gain 
more voice in their domestic or public roles. Men’s sense of agency, by compari¬ 
son, appears to be much less multidimensional and more contingent on their 
status as providers and local economic trends. 

The frequent uneven movement—where women gain a sense of power and 
freedom and men feel stagnant or see minimal movement—may have detrimen¬ 
tal effects on the community as a whole. When men backslide and feel insecure, 
or perhaps even when they remain content not to climb, this may impede the 
functioning of local institutions and slow relaxation of and change in gender 
norms. Alternatively, when men see desirable outlets through which to exercise 
agency, it may be easier for them to recognize and welcome women’s changing 
roles. And it is in this sense that men’s and women’s capacities to exercise agency 
in a community interact and together shape the prospects for the relaxation of 
gender norms. 

In most communities, we observed a gradual process of norm contestation and 
negotiation. Women’s aspirations are changing, but they are not necessarily find¬ 
ing promising openings for acting on them. In Ba’adan center women felt 
empowered, but their stronger agency continues to be heavily bound by tradi¬ 
tional roles for their gender. Moreover, as explored in chapter 5, women who take 
on new public roles in very constrained environments may not necessarily derive 
greater agency like the women in Ceadir-Lunga. 

In the eight communities'® similar to Jaipur and Malangachilima, however, 
where men are climbing the ladder in large numbers along with the women, we 
see gender norms relaxing quickly and local economic, political, and civic institu¬ 
tions becoming more accepting of women’s participation and leadership. These 
sample communities with extensive twin climbing most often featured both 
sexes finding better livelihoods, becoming more active in local economic 


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“It is good for women to he strong, hut the most important opinion is the man’s 
opinion. He is the person who controls everything and has the power to make 
decisions in the family.’’ 

—Village women’s focus group, Kharef District, the Republic of Yemen 

“A person has to look for opportunity, take risks, push themselves, and fight 
to get ahead.’’ 

—Urban man, Lambayeque Province, Peru 


organizing, and women entering local politics. These changes may send hopeful 
signals to other men and women about the potential for them to climb, and 
hence these contexts more reliably demonstrate rapid and significant institu¬ 
tional transformations in gender equality on the ground. 

In his work on systemic shifts in inequality at the nation-state level, Tilly 
describes how the rhythm of social inclusion and democracy building can shift, 
almost unpredictably, from slower events of individuals breaking down barriers 
to exclusion [and only limited numbers of people climbing the ladder) to a much 
more rapid “categorical phenomena” where whole social groups suddenly find 
pathways to full citizenship in their societies (2007a, 64-70; 2007b, 35-50). 
Similar processes seem to be at play at the micro level. It may be helpful to con¬ 
ceive of extensive twin climbing seen in the focus groups as “innovative” 
moments in the lives of the communities, moments when more democratic 
markets, politics, and civic action become reinforcing—with greater gender 
equality as a core driver of this shift in institutional functioning. If this is the case, 
there may be potential for more holistic policy designs that can buttress both 
men’s and women’s agency and support their communities to make a shift to the 
more inclusive institutional equilibrium reported by study participants in Jaipur 
and Malangachilima. 

Women’s and men’s accounts of the processes that increase their agency 
hinted at why their community institutions may function better with more 
gender-inclusive participation and leadership. The power holder perched on the 
top step of the men’s ladder in Malangachilima “loves people” and does not 
discriminate; whereas the women on the top step remarked that they are now 
strong enough to approach a man with great power. Power is circumscribed by 
the norms of social interaction, as much as by physical, economic, or political 
might. Jaipur’s most powerful and free woman “takes initiative and responsibil¬ 
ity for community concerns,” and is “trusted and looked up to by other women. ’ 
Women on Jaipur’s top step are also able to interact with the community elite 
and access public resources. In other words, as women find ways to climb their 
ladders, more and more gain entry into and benefit from the formal spaces of 
their communities. And in doing so, the attributes of greater power, identified 
by the focus groups, suggest that the presence of these women may help shift 

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informal governance capacities toward more idealized normative codes of 
conduct. 

Another crucial point is that a woman on the top rung can slip down if she 
“loses the trust of the people in the community,” or “stops communicating with 
people lower on the ladder” or becomes arrogant. Leaders who display less than 
best behaviors are likely to be sanctioned by their communities. But this funda¬ 
mental mechanism for local institutional accountability is far weaker in exclud¬ 
ing environments. Where women can gain entry and influence, local institutions 
appear to become more responsive to serving the entire public good and not just 
the male half, or a small group of eUtes. 

We note that women’s and men’s self-help groups and economic collective 
action are also present in the communities with extensive twin climbing. 
The power of civic networks in forging more-inclusive societies cannot be under¬ 
estimated, especially their role in increasing women’s empowerment. Appadurai’s 
(2004] research on organizational efforts among slum-dwelling women in 
Mumbai, India, shows dramatic shifts in women’s mind-sets due to the solidarity 
and awareness-raising of their organizations. When oppressed social groups see 
that the structures of their subordination are not necessarily immovable, they 
seem able to take bolder actions to help themselves—finding jobs and earning 
income, becoming active in civic organizations or politics, claiming a voice in 
their households—in ways that before were inconceivable. The women can then 
help one another to escape the bottom steps and marshal ways to mobilize and 
accumulate assets and capabilities. 

Notes 

1. See Petesch, Smulovitz, and Walton (2005) for a macro-level framework that inspires 
this community-level analysis. 

2. Our tool builds on the “ladder of life" from the World Bank’s global Moving Out of 
Poverty methodology (Narayan and Petesch 2005), which was designed to assess 
socio-economic mobility from the perspectives of men and women who had escaped 
poverty or remained trapped in poverty. While the ladder of life focuses on conditions 
that affect the poverty transitions of households, the “ladder of power and freedom” 
assesses factors that affect the “transitions” in the agency of individuals of the same 
gender. 

3. The number of steps on each ladder varies according to what each group deemed was 
necessary to represent their community’s reality. On average, three to five steps are 
defined, with rural communities typically adding fewer rungs than urban ones. 

4. In Ba’adan center, the women’s mobility index is a substantial 0.40, while the men’s 
plunges to -0.85. 

5. Figure 4.1 does not include the five men’s and five women’s ladders from Sudan 
because the women’s focus group did not conduct the sorting exercise at the end of 
their ladder discussions. Figure 4.2, however, includes the five Sudanese men’s ladders 
in the average ratings for the men’s mobility. 

6. If we used calculations based on the median mobility indexes for each sample group, 
urban men perform somewhat better, but the rural ladders become a more moderate 

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159 


version of the urban ladders, with rural women’s average mobility doubling the rural 
men’s. The median, as opposed to average, mobility indexes for the urban ladders are 
0.35 for women, but 0.0 for men. In the rural sample, the median mobility index is 
0.20 for women and 0.10 for men. 

7. Figures 4.4-4.7 present mobility factors mentioned by least 5 percent of the groups 
in the coding exercise. We do not, however, include the many factors coded under 
"other.” Due to time constraints with informing the World Development Report 201 2, 
it was not always possible to refine and clarify how the coders understood some of the 
factors coded as “other.” A review of these factors reveals that a good share could have 
been coded under the already defined categories. We do not feel, however, that 
the overall pattern of findings would be much affected by a re-coding. Some of the 
additional factors under the "other” category that we did not code for include religion, 
sorcery, aging, and luck (winning the lottery). 

8. This Jaipur is not the large city with the same name in Rajasthan State in India. 

9. See, for instance, Petesch (2011); Menon and van der Meulen Rodgers (2011); Bouta, 
Frerks, and Bannon (2005); Bop (2001); Meintjes (2001); El-Bushra (2000); and 
Sorensen (1998). Petesch (2012) elaborates on the four conflict-affected countries in 
this sample in more detail than was possible in this study. 

10. The communities with extensive twin climbing reside in Bhutan, India (three), 
Liberia, Peru (two), and Tanzania. Half are urban, half rural. 


References 

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Bop, C. 2001. “Women in Conflicts: Their Gains and Their Losses.” In The Aftermath: 
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Meintjes, S. 2001. “War and Post-War Shifts in Gender Relations.” In The Aftermath: 
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Menon, N., and Y. van der Meulen Rodgers. 2011. “War and Women’s Work: Evidence 
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Narayan, D. 2002. Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook. Washington, DC: 
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Narayan, D., and P. Petesch. 2005. Moving Out of Poverty: Understanding Ereedom, 
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Petesch, P. 2011. Women's Empowerment Arising from Violent Conflict and Recovery: Life 
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Petesch, P, C. Smulovitz, and M. Walton. 2005. “Evaluating Empowerment: A Pramework 
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CHAPTER 5 


Structures of Opportunity and 
Structures of Constraint 


Both the women and men in our study recognized that certain factors and 
processes under their control can enhance their capacity to shape their lives. This 
chapter ponders factors that are also vitally important for exercising agency, but 
over which they typically have far less control: local-level institutions in the pub- 
hc sphere of their communities, and the normative climate for inclusion and 
accountabihty in these arenas. It is in the creation of structures of opportunities 
that are open and equal for men and women where policies have largely focused. 
And while changes have been implemented and more opportunities created that 
have translated to changes in endowments, economic participation, and 
aspirations, much hard work remains. 

“Progress toward gender equality,” in World Development Report 2012 [World 
Bank 2012, 330], “entails shifts towards a new equilibrium where women have 
access to more endowments, more economic opportunities, and more ways to 
exercise their agency—and where this new arrangement becomes the dominant 
order.” Chapter 5 draws on our dataset to probe the role that community charac¬ 
teristics play in constraining and enabling agency. Our initial focus is on local labor 
markets and then public and civic institutions, and especially how gender equality 
is reflected in legal frameworks. The constraints of gender norms, however, remain 
central because they so greatly shape aspirations and access to opportunities. 

The traits associated by the focus groups with the ladder steps reveal that, as 
more and more women move up, a share of them are penetrating—perhaps for 
the first time in their communities—formal institutions and labor markets. For 
instance, in urban Karta-e-Bakheter [Parwan], Afghanistan, the women pointed 
out that on step 1 of their ladder of power and freedom, a woman is not working 
for pay (or cannot], but on step 2 she may be involved in “tailoring, embroidery, 
weaving carpets, tending home poultry.” On step 3, a woman may be employed 
in a more remunerative job outside the home [e.g., earning income as a nursing 
aide or from livestock]. And a woman on their top step is usually well educated, 
can be “nominated even for election,” and “may be a doctor or teacher, and has 


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Education and development of the country also matter. If the country is rich, 
the people on the bottom can rise to a higher level If [not], people are depressed, 
unemployed, homeless, and hopeless. 

—Urban man, Dobrowice, Poland 


a good economic position. They have freedom and power.” Even in more 
traditional societies, such as Karta-e-Bakheter, greater participation of women in 
public spheres is displayed on the ladders. The basic question for this chapter is 
what role do institutional and normative factors play in shaping perceptions of 
agency. Do these three pieces move together? Or separately? 

Gender norms influence not only women’s [uneven) capacities for exercising 
agency—explored in previous chapters—but also the extent to which local insti¬ 
tutions welcome women’s participation and leadership.^ This social context, 
which Kabeer [2001, 47) argues can be more aptly understood as “structures of 
constraint,” means that individual women acting alone are unlikely to challenge 
and change the conservative elements of their local institutions: “The project of 
women’s empowerment is dependent on collective action in the public arena as 
well as individual assertiveness in the private.” While we observe many signs of 
individual women crossing gender boundaries throughout our dataset, signs of 
effective collective action [e.g., the women of Jaipur and Malangachilima in 
chapter 4) and institutional change in the gender order are relatively rare. This 
chapter looks at more typical communities, where local opportunity structures 
are less open to women’s initiatives and chiefly appear to reinforce, rather than 
alleviate, gender inequalities. Gender norms in these environments prove more 
resistant to change. 

The operations of markets and other institutions reflect local gender norms. 
The interaction between beliefs and attitudes, on one hand, and women’s 
participation in the labor market, on the other, is tamed partly by the potential 
benefits women can obtain for themselves and their families, as well as by the 
norms within their households.^ Escriche, Olcina, and Sanchez [2004) note the 
obvious changes in women’s ability to work [outside the home) and in gender 
roles in the last 30 years—also seen in the decade changes study participants 
reflect on during the focus groups—including changes in attitudes toward women 
in the labor force. But we cannot really say whether these changes are due to 
adjustments in preferences and norms governing gender roles or due to a different 
socialization process for younger women and the transfer of preferences and aspi¬ 
rations from parents to daughters. It is not only the household and the market, but 
the overall structure of opportunities and normative climate in a community that 
helps or hinders women’s and men’s ability to negotiate gender-allocated roles. 

Economic participation can be a strategic move to give women voice. But our 
dataset makes plain that, while communities may be growing or shedding jobs, 
the impact of economic trends on women’s access to income opportunities and 
their sense of empowerment is far from linear. Social and cultural factors affect 


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expectations of whether and under what conditions women may seek a job, as 
well as the types of work that they consider desirable and available to them. 

In the first part of this chapter, we show how normative change is impeded by 
numerous factors, including the interplay between preferences and the local 
opportunities that combine to funnel women into less productive areas of the 
economy. For other reasons (explored later), women’s economic participation in 
even dynamic markets may not be enough to challenge and change gender struc¬ 
tures meaningfully. In the final sections of the chapter, we look at how better laws, 
political leadership, and community organizing provide other potential outlets for 
women to gain more power in their communities. Yet, our findings reveal that 
norms act as important constraints on these routes to empowerment as well. 

Community Factors That Fuel Agency 

Certain community-level conditions and trends, gathered from information from 
local key informants,^ seem to be more conducive to men’s and women’s 
empowerment. To frame the comparative analysis, we sorted the focus groups’ 
ladders into three categories, according to the extent of the mobility they 
reported: high, moderate, and downward. Figure 5.1 shows the average mobility 
for the three sets of men’s and women’s ladders, and table 5.1 presents the ladder 
distributions in each set by sex and location. 


Figure 5.1 Average Mobility Index 


Low mobility ladders 

Medium mobility ladders 

High mobility ladders 

-40 -20 



H-1-1-r- 

0 20 40 60 


Average mobility index, % 
■ Women ■ Men 


80 


Note:Jhe mobility index is calculated based on the difference between the mean step now and 10 years ago on each ladder. 
The distribution was divided into three groups according to the average distribution within each country set of communities. 
We used a tercile distribution function that classified the ladders based on the distributions of the mobility index for each 
country. 


Table 5.1 Number of Ladders in Each Mobility Category by Sex and Location 



High mobility ladders 

Moderate mobility ladders 

Downward mobility ladders 


Men's 

Women's 

Men's 

Women's 

Men's 

Women's 

Urban 

4 

27 

21 

14 

26 

9 

Rural 

12 

14 

17 

14 

17 

14 


Note: Results from 189 adult focus groups. The five Sudanese women's ladders are missing from this analysis because they did 
not conduct the sorting exercise. 


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At first glance, the average mobility indexes are quite similar for both 
men’s and women’s ladders in all three categories. However, when looking at 
the specific number of ladders located in each mobility set, more women’s 
ladders are in the high mobility group than men’s, particularly urban 
women’s; and more men’s ladders, also heavily urban, are in the downward 
mobility group. These patterns underpin the polarized urban ladders pre¬ 
sented in chapter 4. One important explanation tor why so many urban men 
feel disempowered or in limbo is that difficult local economic conditions 
provide few job opportunities for them. This—combined with their views of 
what constitutes an appropriate “male” job [which allows them to fulfill 
their provider role)—prevents men from adapting more easily to a changing 
environment. 

Figures 5.2 compares local economic and poverty data with the ladder mobil¬ 
ity categories. The focus groups’ ladders that feature high mobility [more 
empowerment) correspond to communities that were more prosperous on aver¬ 
age over the past decade and that have lower rates of poverty [as reported by key 
informants). We anticipated these findings for the men’s ladders, but were sur¬ 
prised that favorable economic conditions and lower poverty levels proved 
equally important for women’s perceptions of empowerment as well. We also 
find that men’s and women’s mobility is higher in communities where women 
currently serve as local elected leaders. The significance of the presence of civic 
groups and empowerment trends is more ambiguous. 

The narratives in our dataset reflect the global trend of women’s increasing 
participation in the labor force in the past decade. The rate of women working 
for pay has increased in most communities compared with a decade ago. This 
rate is the highest in the communities where the focus groups of both sexes 
reported greater gains in power and freedom [figure 5.3). 

Whose Jobs? 

In economic sociology, markets are as cultural as any other aspect of social life, 
and norms and values are a central part of their constitution and functioning 
[Spillman 2012; Wherry 2012; Zelizer 2010). Markets are not gender neutral; 
they are embedded in societies and take up [and reflect) their specific gender 
norms. Thus, when assessing women’s agency, it is important to bear in mind that 
women’s knowledge and evaluations of their actual chances in local labor mar¬ 
kets are intimately shaped by the hierarchy of values to which they adhere, as 
well as the values of their community, family, local leaders, and employers. In 
other words, whether jobs are plentiful or not in local markets, they may or may 
not be open to women, or women may not see existing opportunities as appro¬ 
priate for them. Norms and values not only act here as external secondary factors 
brought in as part of the black box of individual pref erences, but are fundamental 
to, for example, how employers define potential or ideal employees. 

World Development Report 2012 documents the rapid expansion of women 
participating in the labor force in recent decades together with a more slowly 


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Figure 5.2 Mobility on Ladders in More Prosperous and Poorer Communities 



Women's ladders Men's ladders 


Note: Respondents scored the prosperity level of tfie community compared with a decade ago on a scale from 1 to 3, with 
1 = less prosperous, 2 = prosperity remains the same, 3 = more prosperous. 


b. Mobility Hiaher in Communities with Less Poverty 



■ High mobility ■ Moderate mobility ■ Downward mobility 


Note: Data from 189 adult focus groups.The five Sudanese women's ladders are missing from this analysis because they did 
not conduct the sorting exercise. Respondents provided the estimated share of community members living in poverty 
conditions. 


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More women are making business now and can do anything for themselves. 

—Rural women’s focus group, Suakoko District, Liberia 

Women study to he teachers or pedagogues because they love children. Men 
often inherit a private business. 

—Urban women’s focus group, Belgrade, Serbia 


Figure 5.3 Rates of Women Working for Pay with Twin Climbing and Falling 


2.4 n 



Twin Women Twin falling Men 

climbing climbing, climbing, 

men falling women falling 


■ Now ■ 10 years ago 

Note: Data from 184 adult focus groups. The five men's and five women's ladders from Sudan are missing from this analysis 
because the women's groups did not conduct the sorting exercise. Respondents scored the extent to which women work for 
pay in the community on a scale from 1 to 3, with 3 = majority work for pay, 2 = some work for pay, 1 = rare for women to 
work for pay. 


declining occupational segregation by gender across the world. Women continue 
to be over-represented in less productive sectors of the economy and in positions 
of lower authority (see Tzannatos 1998]. To explore how gender norms may be 
aflecting economic agency and the desirability of particular local jobs on offer, 
we asked the focus groups to reflect on differences in men’s and women’s eco¬ 
nomic roles and capacities and key challenges in their labor markets. 

Discrimination in general is a problem for both sexes in the study, although 
women see gender discrimination against them as a stronger barrier than men do. 
It is a factor that influences which jobs women and men can get. Men reported 
discrimination against men and against women, but both women and men 
reported more discrimination against women. In Kalahandi District (Andhra 
Pradesh], India, a woman explained simply, “We are female. That is why we get 
lower wages.” It is relevant that young men and young women have the strongest 
views regarding discrimination. 


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Opportunities for jobs vary significantly by gender; in fact, when asked to sort 
the “best” and “worst” ways to earn a living for workers in their localities, the 
focus groups, across countries and communities, identified about 50 percent of 
the jobs they mentioned as gender-specific ones [either men’s or women’s jobs). 
Individual accounts of the factors that determine their ability to get a job reflect 
these gender differences. Normative perceptions, as well as predominant gender 
roles within a society, define a job as male, female, or gender neutral. And not 
only are jobs gender specific, but the skills jobs require are as well. Men in the 
study, for example, believe that having good connections is important, and they 
mention this more than women (figure 5.4)—as well as give more relevance to 
information sources about job opportunities. Women depend more on the 
demand for gender-specific abilities such as soft skills for “female” jobs [such as 
education, nursing, or retail). The ability to balance work and family life and hav¬ 
ing previous job experience matter more for women than for men. But both 
equally recognize that education is a central factor at the time of finding a job. 

Gender discrimination-as shown in figure 5.5—plays a role in the types 

of jobs women can find, because it influences perceptions of women’s abilities 
and the opportunities that are open to them. Again, jobs requiring “feminine” 
skills in social relations—better at conversation, more attentive—are deemed 
better for women, but jobs involving authority, technical knowledge, strength, 
or public safety often remain solely for men. Young men in the sample felt 
that women can find jobs more easily, while young women had the opposite 
opinion.'^ “I browse through the newspaper ads in Belgrade looking for work, 
and I see more demand for girls to work in cafes and pizzerias, boutiques, 
counters, everywhere—for them it is easier,” remarked a young man from 
Sumadija District, Serbia. 


Figure 5.4 Most-Mentioned Factors Affecting Access to Jobs in the Local Labor Market, 
According to the Men's and Women's Focus Groups 


Information sources of job opportunities (family) 
Work schedule to balance household needs 
Previous work experience 
Information sources of job opportunities (not family) 

Physical strength 
Connections 
Soft skills (attitudes and behaviors) 
Hard skills 
Transport and distance 
Education and other credentials 



■ Men ■ Women 


Note: Data from 388 adult and young adult focus groups. 


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Figure 5.5 Perception of Discrimination by Sex in the Labor Markets 



against women against men to find work to find work 

■ Women ■ Men 

Note: Data from 388 adult and young adult focus groups. 

Figure 5.5 shows how women and men recognize that there is more 
discrimination in the market against women than against men. But a significant 
number of views also points to some discrimination against men. Women more 
often perceive that in line with this discrimination, it is easier for men to find a 
job. Men are more evenly divided over which gender has better job prospects. 

“Women excel in health, education, and housekeeping. But men excel at 
everything else, like engineering and police,” suggested a woman in Rafah, West 
Bank and Gaza. In Karta-e-Bakheter, Afghanistan, a woman said that “tailoring, 
embroidery, and carpet weaving are for women, and construction, metal work, 
carpentry, and jobs in the government are for men.” In Monrovia, Liberia, where 
gender norms are more relaxed than in West Bank and Gaza and Afghanistan, 
women are servers at “drinking spots,” while men purchase supplies and handle 
the cash. In Lambayeque Province, Peru, where the tourist industry is booming, 
men are the chefs in the city’s world-class restaurants that cater to the tourists, 
while women, who have less access to training and opportunities, are sometimes 
cooks in smaller establishments and catering companies. InTandjouare Prefecture, 
Togo, a young woman explained that jobs requiring “physical force [are] for men, 
and courage and patience are for women.” 

Social norms, and the institutions that support them, determine to a large 
extent the types of jobs, and their particular working conditions, that women and 
men can apply for, as much as the views the communities hold about specific 
jobs (Morrison and Jutting 2005). These views take several forms. A detailed look 
at the data suggests three specific ways that norms and jobs are in constant dia¬ 
logue for women. 

First, we see that the women must negotiate their work choices around the 
different constraints and norms governing a woman to avoid female-inappropriate 
work and potential risks or difficulties—verbal, physical, and sexual harassment. 


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physical injury, and more. [Most of these norms follow the attributes of a good 
woman, advanced in chapter 1.) In the process of searching for work, women in 
the study not only considered salary and status [which everyone takes into 
account) but also had to factor in the potential threats to their moral integrity 
and their family’s honor. In communities that still tightly hold to more traditional 
norms for women and gender roles,^ some jobs considered inappropriate or 
immoral for a woman are perfectly acceptable for men. For example, any job in 
trade, which involves dealing with strangers, or in services that require interaction 
with men, or a job with night hours, often are off-limits to women. 

In all the Sudanese focus groups, one of the worst jobs for women was hawk¬ 
ing tea, coffee, and homemade food because it required women to “work long 
hours on the street and deal with different types of people who may treat them 
indecently.” They mentioned that tea sellers under age 40 can be treated like 
prostitutes and even older women are harassed as well. Unmarried women doing 
domestic work for other families risked sexual advances that “deprived a girl of 
modesty.” Women’s jobs cleaning schools and selling in telecom centers and 
shops are also deemed undesirable in Sudan, but are considered acceptable, 
good-paying jobs for women in many sample communities in Sub-Saharan Africa 
and elsewhere. Similarly, call-center jobs in Hyderabad [Andhra Pradesh), India, 
are not well considered, in spite of the potential economic gains: “Actually, there 
is good money in call-center jobs, but society doesn’t consider this a decent job. 
Women engaged in such jobs are not considered respectable because it has night 
shifts and the workplace is full of young men who have fat salaries.” In these 
communities, women approach the labor market with already constrained 
choices and miss out on good opportunities for employment. 

In more conservative communities, such as those in West Bank and Gaza, the 
Republic of Yemen, and Afghanistan, for example, where women’s physical 
mobility is restricted, it is not surprising that the women are less attractive as 
potential employees. Similarly, women who have the qualifications for a job, but 
who need their husbands’ or father’s consent to work, are considered less reliable, 
even if more qualified than male colleagues. Sometimes, women from the sample 
communities where no childcare services were available—for example, in the 
Dominican Republic—self-censored their work choices [as much as employers 
do) when faced with the possibility that household demands may compete with 
their work hours. The whole set of social relations that makes up the labor 
market is affected by the gender norms of a community, and not only the part 
pertaining to gender relations in the household. 

Second, a good job for a woman has to be flexible. How women intemaUzed or 
appropriated the norms of their communities shows in the way they described 
what constitutes a desirable job for women. These jobs tend to mesh well with 
domestic work and childcare in terms of location and time flexibility, and do not 
involve physical strength. “Safe and easy jobs are best for women” pointed out a 
woman from Jaipur [Odisha), India, meaning the best jobs are not physically 
demanding, are close to the woman’s house, and allow them to devote time to 
housework. 


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Flexibility is one of the main reasons why being a small business owner is 
frequently mentioned by the focus groups as a suitable job for a woman. It pro¬ 
vides some freedom in the allocation of time and does not require traveling long 
distances away from home. Women’s search for flexibility solves both self-imposed 
limits (to accomplish the many household tasks they have more easily) and ways 
to adhere to social norms. While some women find jobs that conveniently 
complement their domestic duties, others face demanding physical work in fields 
or factories in addition to their housework and are aware of the price they pay. 
“Selling coconuts is the worst because women have to climb coconut trees, cut the 
nuts, husk them, and then carry them to the market to sell. Women do all the hard 
work and men come home and find dinner ready and served to them each eve¬ 
ning,” pointed out a young woman from East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. 

Third, economic need is stronger than traditional norms, so the norms have to 
adjust. In East Jakarta, Indonesia, selling carpet used to be only a man’s job, par¬ 
ticularly because it requires travel around the city. But today, being a female 
itinerant carpet seller is considered a good job, although “it wasn’t a few years ago. 
But because of poor living conditions [and economic stress], it must be done—by 
men and women,” noted a young woman. It is obviously better if a woman can 
sell from home and take care of the house, but when both wife and husband have 
to work to feed their children, norms relax and adapt. In Serbia, women do con¬ 
struction work under the same conditions as men, rain and snow. And in Liberia, 
opportunities opened up for women during and after the war, and they began 
running businesses, farming, and selling cash crops. 

Clearly the choices women make when it comes to work vary, depending on 
several factors, and so does the way they negotiate social norms. For some women 
in the study, taking a particular job is a response to certain restrictions in their 
choices; for others, it is an expansion of their abdity to choose. In rural areas, as 
Agarwal (2003) reports, nearby farm work, household gardening, or small live¬ 
stock tending can help women increase their agency because the jobs are acces¬ 
sible, manageable with their domestic work burden, and within their mobility 
restrictions; require less education; and do not need assets or investment. Some 
women feel motivated to work to reach specific aspirations or goals. All of them 
are acting as economic agents and expressing their preferences to earn income, 
perform their domestic (gender) roles, safeguard their reputation, and more 
(Kabeer 2000). 

It Takes a Village: Local Economic Dynamism and Empowerment 

Having a job that offers the possibility of generating an income and accumulating 
assets is at the core of both men’s and women’s accounts of what helps them gain 
power and freedom. Economic well-being is one of the main attributes they 
associated with being on the top step of the ladder. Eor men, having a job so they 
can be a good provider is the identity of their gender and meets the expectation 
that they will be a good husband, for women, a job and its income are means to 
increase their bargaining power inside the household. But men and women alike 


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I worked in Zastava [a factory] for 24 years and then I was fired. I automati¬ 
cally lost everything. I lost any freedom and power I had. Everything was lost. 

—Urban man, Kragujevac, Serbia 

Unfortunately, the economic situation has a big effect on an individual’s per¬ 
sonality. ... If [the man] is able to provide for his family, his personality tvill 
be stronger. 

—45-year-old urban man, Old City, Hebron, West Bank and Gaza 


are largely dependent on the structural conditions of their local economies in the 
pursuit of employment. 

The links between empowerment, norms, and economic dynamism are not 
clear in this study. As women become more economically active, they gain a 
sense of empowerment. The exceptions are contexts where norms are deeply 
discouraging or desirable job choices extremely scarce. Here we provide 
additional evidence from our study that women perceive empowerment from 
their economic initiatives, regardless whether their economies are growing 
rapidly or moderately, or shrinking. Looking at market trends described by the 
focus groups, however, gender norms do not keep up with women’s changing 
roles. This variability means that perceived changes in empowerment and gender 
norms cannot be assumed to be complementary forces or direct and universal 
consequences of economic dynamism. 

To explore these interactions more fully, we examine some weaker local econo¬ 
mies in the study against a more dynamic one to see what happens to local norms 
around women’s paid work. In these contexts, the variation in the stringency of 
norms does not correspond with the state of the economy in the community or 
with how women are able to handle both norms and employment opportunities. 

When Choices Disappear or Stay Poor 

The traditional gender division between a household’s productive and reproduc¬ 
tive tasks assumes that there are sufficient economic opportunities for men to 
find paid employment or other productive activities to support the household. 
But reality is not always that accommodating. What happens to women’s agency 
in weak economic situations where there are not many jobs available, and where 
lack of economic dynamism takes a toll on men’s opportunities? The answers 
vary, but it is clear that normative views are shaping women’s sense of their 
choices, along with the stressful market conditions. 

Among communities that have seen less growth, economic need is forcing a 
relaxation of gender norms. In the least dynamic communities where everyone is 
struggling, especially men who cannot continue providing for the household, 
women spoke of being thrust into the market to earn an income. They end up 
competing for and working in whatever jobs are available. The market registers 

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There is no work. Nobody is doing anything. If you find a job, you cannot hold 
it. And the jobs which you do find are the worst ones. 

—Urban young woman, Kragujevac, Serbia 


fewer differences between genders when needed workers are unskilled and eager 
to work. There is little self-selection out of a job, except for some clear gender 
differences, such as physical strength (from which norms were derived], but even 
that does not keep women from working in construction or agriculture. In agri¬ 
culture, men do the jobs that require plowing or heavy lifting, while women seed, 
weed, harvest, and pack. Choices of jobs, according to the focus groups, are more 
often constrained by availability, and job selection may not be strategic or based 
on a sense of self-efficacy or empowerment. 

In Serbia, Poland, and Moldova (as discussed in other chapters], women’s 
presence in the labor force has a longer history; nevertheless, it too segregates 
jobs by gender, similar to contexts where women’s economic participation is 
more recent. In the East European communities, as elsewhere in the sample, 
women opt for careers in the humanities and teaching, while men go into sci¬ 
ences, engineering, and business. “Women are less capable in business than men,” 
and “women study to be teachers or pedagogues because they love children 
more” is the view among Serbian women in Belgrade. Yet, men and women from 
this region voiced growing disenchantment about which jobs can be found and 
kept in their weak local economy. The type of job may vary, from domestic work 
for young women to factory work for young men, but the feeling seems pervasive 
that opportunities are limited at best. 

In some communities, like rural Eloresti District, Moldova, opportunities are 
deteriorating for both genders. The community had good stable jobs for both 
women and men that disappeared when the greenhouses and dryers closed, the 
state-owned enterprises were liquidated, and some private companies went out 
of business. Eloresti District is poorer than it used to be, and many people grow 
vegetables and raise small livestock to survive. Perhaps not surprising, women 
reported disempowerment on their ladder. Men, by contrast, said they have 
moved off their bottom step in large numbers by finding stable work locally or 
with temporary migration, which has allowed them to “find a good wife” and 
“stop drinking and start taking care of the family.” In line with their gender role, 
these factors allowed men to escape the bottom step in this village (box 5.1 
presents the particularly difficult case of Roma men in Serbia struggling to over¬ 
come a harsh economic and social climate]. 

Por Eloresti District’s women, by comparison, the local jobs still on offer strain 
their gender roles, identities, and expectations. Their discouragement is high, 
although they face little gender discrimination in job opportunities or in equal 
income. Por example, a recent renovation of a local school employed about 30 
people, of whom 12 were women; all received equal pay regardless of the specific 
tasks performed. Moldovan men and women work equally in good and bad jobs 


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Box 5.1 The Roma of Kragujevac: Where Disadvantages and Strict Norms Overlap 
and Trap 

Kragujevac is one of the oldest Roma settlements in Serbia. Small in size, its population is 
dense with a high unemployment rate. Multigeneration families have at least three children 
and 95 percent of the inhabitants are poor. Many people have been laid off in the last decade 
in the economic downturn. Men find it hard to reach employers and get a job. They mainly 
engage in manual labor and agricultural and seasonal work, collect secondary raw materials, 
or work for the local garbage disposal company. Some find work through the National 
Employment Service and personal contacts. 

Women work to a lesser extent than men: a small number of them clean other people's 
houses, work for the municipal gardening company, or pick fruit in season. Most women do 
not receive fixed salaries.The few girls who finish school actively seek jobs, but have difficulties 
finding regular work. Kragujevac does not present a very uplifting panorama. 

"Men and women have a lot of free time because, among other reasons, they cannot find 
anything to do for pay," related a young woman of Kragujevac. Even when they find a job, in 
their free time men tend to socialize with other men, gamble, or drink. The younger men, who 
have lost their motivation and aspirations, do the same. "Most young men in the community 
have a lot of free time. There are a lot of idle guys who do nothing; they look for work, but hope 
not to find it,"explained a young man. 

Women, as traditional, are in charge of the housework, whether they are working for pay or 
not. When men don't work, they sleep late and spend their time with their friends, away from 
their homes. "He only comes home when he is hungry. He brings no money. How could he 
bring money when he does nothing? We receive child support, which is not enough, but what 
can we do when there are no better opportunities? Our families help us a little, as much as they 
can afford to,"commented one woman. Women notice that men, unlike them, find it harder to 
accept the loss of work, given the pressure they feel to provide as breadwinners. Even though 
they would like to have more work and better business opportunities, however, when faced 
with unemployment, men would rather be idle than do "female tasks" and contribute to the 
care of the household. 


and get similar earnings. Their discussion about local jobs portrayed men as truck 
drivers, metalworkers, and locksmiths, while women clean and cook, as well as 
work in construction and agriculture. 

And while some gender specialization is evident in the jobs the focus groups 
listed, women are competing for and taking men’s jobs that require strength, 
despite almost universal preference that women do less arduous work. For 
example, men clearly saw strength as a factor that should favor men in construc¬ 
tion work: “Jobs that imply physical work are harder and men are better at those 
kinds of jobs, for example, construction. Moreover, men are braver and therefore 
take more dangerous jobs.” While women see construction as “one of the worst 
ways of making a living” because “it is very physically taxing and pays poorly, it 
is nonetheless viable if it is the only job available. 


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Women in Floresti District defied gender differences and restrictions outright. 
They challenged the concern for their safety and risked traveling at night if they 
needed the job. Safety became a secondary issue when it came to getting a job, 
as some young women noted: “In our situation now, it is more important to find 
a good job with a wage that covers commuting expenses. I prefer to work closer 
to my home in order to save time and money, and my husband prefers this for 
me too. But if I don’t have a choice [with a distant job], he will not forbid it.” 
These women are not abiding by traditional norms, but are they increasing their 
agency in the process? Not always, as they made clear when discussing their lad¬ 
der of power and freedom. To move up, they needed either to start a small busi¬ 
ness or “find a more prestigious job.” 

Even though these women are well educated, the limited desirable opportuni¬ 
ties seem to be holding back more rapid change in gender norms. Some young 
women expressed progressive views in terms of aspirations of freedom and pro¬ 
ductive use of their acquired skills: “I studied and if I find a job opportunity to 
use my education, then I don’t want to stay home just taking care of my children.” 
But as so commonly found in our dataset, this view sits side by side with other 
women’s opinions that highly value the mother’s role. Nor have more flexible 
norms changed young men’s mind-sets: “I consider it better for the entire family 
if the woman stays home and takes care of the children until they are 3 to 8 years 
old.” Although some local women have been working in jobs outside the home 
for decades, norms remain parked between community disapproval and endorse¬ 
ment: “There are some people who say that a working mother has abandoned her 
children”; and “it may be, though, that when a mother leaves her child and gets a 
job, then she is in a difficult economic situation and that is what she needs to do.” 

Sometimes the need for cash in a household and the demand for unskilled 
workers in nearby markets together unlock doors to women’s economic partici¬ 
pation. They may even cross, and change, the boundaries of gender-appropriate 
work, and open up job possibilities for other women. But in contexts where 
choices are limited or deteriorating, the process of norm relaxation is slower 
than in more economically dynamic communities (see box 5.1]. In sum, in 
Floresti District, where previous economic opportunities and education levels 
have raised expectations, where desirable economic options are now scarce, and 
where old and new norms coexist, not just any job will lift women off the bot¬ 
tom ladder step. “I didn’t succeed in finding a job I wanted,” lamented a 
19-year-old woman in her focus group, “so I decided to stay home and take care 
of my children and household.” 

Hato Mayor, a secondary city in the Dominican Republic, is another local 
economy that is losing jobs. Unemployment and poverty in the sample communi¬ 
ties jumped when the free-trade commercial zone they depended on was hit by 
a downturn. Today, it is difficult for workers to find stable jobs and the local 
market is less active. But compared to rural Floresti District, there are enough 
work outlets for many informal workers and entrepreneurs in Hato Mayor to 
make ends meet. Perhaps surprising, both women and men perceived upward 
movement on their ladders and singled out their initiatives with their own 


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businesses and better financial management as central to these gains. Women, for 
instance, said they can move up the ladder by opening their “own small businesses 
selling food, making and selling sweets, selling second-hand clothes, and cleaning 
streets.” These women see themselves as empowered and “willing to push for¬ 
ward” to contribute to their families’ well-being during the difficult times. 

Yet local opinions about women’s dual roles appear to be even more contested 
in Hato Mayor than in Floresti District. The women’s focus groups support 
working mothers and their attempts to reconcile productive and reproductive 
demands, but they were also aware of the opinion this generates in the commu¬ 
nity. When a working mother leaves her children, people think and say that she 
is going “to prostitute herself” Moreover, women reported discrimination and 
physical risk at their jobs: “Women get paid less for more work and they get 
abused.” And they do not dare work at night due to unsafe streets. In their focus 
groups, the men were clearly more conservative than the women. Despite the 
women’s changing roles, men made plain that gender differences should remain 
intact and women should not go after or take male jobs, for instance, working 
construction and driving motorcycle taxis. Younger men were as conservative as 
older men and echoed these negative views. 

When Choices Grow 

Chapter 4 looked at Jaipur [Odisha], India, a rapidly urbanizing town, and 
Malangachilima, Tanzania, a village moving into commercial agriculture. These 
two communities were^ in the midst of particularly fast change, and both 
women’s and men’s focus groups presented clear evidence of a strong relaxation 
of gender norms for women’s pubhc roles. Jaipur and Malangachilima give us a 
valuable look at how quickly women’s roles can sometimes change, when local 
opportunity structures support their economic initiatives. In most other sample 
communities with dynamic local economies, however, gender norms are more 
resistant and do not shift as quickly. 

In Umlazi township B, a community of 3,000 outside Durban, South Africa, 
a local official interviewed for the study estimated that perhaps 80 percent of 
the women currently work outside the home, mainly as teachers and nurses, and 
some in offices, retail, or the police. Just 10 years ago, few women earned any 
income at all. “Women are no longer regarded as just housewives,” a young 
woman remarked, pointing to a shift in the predominant association of women 
with their domestic role. In this suburb of Durban, women generally have more 
education than men, with young women attaining the highest levels. Women in 
Umlazi township B feel empowered; they placed 75 percent of the women in 
their community at the top of their ladder and characterized them as being 
“powerful women who can afford anything. They own vehicles and houses. They 
are single parents and are independent. They do not wait for men to do things 
for them. They send their children to university. They have lots of money. They 
have everything they need and can eat whatever they feel like eating.” 

Young women here do not see themselves as bound by any restrictions when 
it comes to finding a job: “Nothing [prevents us from getting a good job]. 

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Now women can go out to work and hold a high-ranking job, even in the army 
and the police. This is a great change since our parent’s time. 

—Urban young man, Khartoum, Sudan 


In today’s world, women fit anywhere as long as you have the right qualifica¬ 
tions.” They listed highly skilled work—some conventionally masculine jobs—as 
suitable for women, desirable to them, and available not only to men. They 
asserted that they can be police officers, lawyers, and doctors, just the same as 
men. They also remarked that they want to be like their fathers and “have pres¬ 
tige like him, and get [public] exposure like him.” For these young women, 
domestic work and care giving are not attractive jobs. 

But while their hopes for the future include professional careers, they also 
want marriage, recognizing that pursuing both has a cost: “If you are a married 
woman, it is even more difficult [to work far from home] and it can destroy 
the marriage. Men cannot wait for a woman. If you are gone too long, by the 
time you come back, he may have moved out to live with someone else.” 
These young women are forced to hang on to this dual role of professional 
worker and proper wife to accommodate male peers who may or may not 
welcome their income-earning role. “Yes, it is acceptable that they have the 
right to work,” noted a young man, “It is good because they can assist their 
husbands in meeting household demands. In some households, you find that 
the man is unemployed and only the woman works and supports the family.” 
Yet, another young man disagreed strongly, “It is not acceptable because a 
woman needs to be at home caring for the children. Most of the time, working 
women are promiscuous and don’t respect their husbands.” Unlike the com¬ 
munities that are struggling with limited jobs and high levels of poverty, these 
young women at least can take heart in the ready availability of desirable jobs 
and the prospect that some men are broadminded enough to welcome this 
development. 

As quickly as women’s public roles are changing in Umlazi township B, tradi¬ 
tional gender identities continue to frame desirable jobs. Other young women 
consider construction jobs as more suitable for men due to their greater strength. 
And when men are employed in healthcare, “male nurses are discriminated 
against and people call them homosexuals.” Gender stereotyping allocates such 
jobs as nursing and office administrative work more often to women and author¬ 
ity positions to men: “If the school principal is a man, the school is highly 
respected because men are known for enforcing discipline.” 

In Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the market has become more dynamic, 
but it is still not easy for men or women to find jobs. Education remains a 
distant objective for everyone. Some young people aspire to technical and 
professional jobs, but they are not attainable by local workers. Indeed most 
of the good jobs are clearly manual skilled labor that is highly segregated by 


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gender: mechanic s work, carpentry, and construction for men, and sewing 
and housekeeping for women. A female mechanic will be hired “only if she 
has real experience and because women mechanics are very scarce,” noted a 
man, but women “don’t have the strength to carry bricks,” so they should not 
work in construction. The Ouagadougou focus groups also mentioned that 
they avoided illegal or risky jobs because they threaten people’s honor, 
which appears to be very important to men and women alike. 

The qualities of desirable and unappealing jobs, as well as the determinants 
of access to them—norms of femininity, flexibility, and need—vary when con¬ 
sidered in the context of specific communities. The Umlazi township B com¬ 
munity has a more dynamic economy, so young women are reaching for and 
expecting better opportunities than their mothers had, which are less defined 
by traditional gender norms than in urban communities experiencing tougher 
economies. Young women in Hato Mayor, the Dominican Republic, are com¬ 
pleting high school, for instance, but their local economies are stressed and 
discourage women from conceiving ofj much less pursuing, professional jobs as 
part of their future (table 5.2). In Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, jobs also remain 
scarce and traditional norms continue to segment the labor market and dampen 
aspirations. 

In his review of the literature on youth aspirations in Africa, heavy and Smith 
(2010) finds that higher poverty rates and the lower socio-economic status of 
rural communities limit the hopes of young people. In our rural sample, however, 
there are village economies with enough vitality and growth that young people 
can imagine better futures for themselves than what is immediately available. In 
other communities, norms are relaxing and reinforcing women’s economic initia¬ 
tives. A case in point is Firestone District, Liberia. 

Firestone District, a rural town described by a key informant as poorer than a 
decade ago, is still recovering from the recent downsizing of its Firestone rubber 
plantation and processing plant. This event sent men looking for work in other 


Table 5.2 Desirable and Undesirable Jobs in Three Urban Communities 



Dynamic labor market: 
Umlazi township B, 
South Africa 

Middling market: 
Ouagadougou, 
Burkina Faso 

Slow labor market: 

Hato Mayor, 
Dominican Republic 

Desirable Jobs 

Nurse^ 

Trader 

Mototaxi driver 


Teacher 

Tailor (women) 

Construction worker (men) 


Police officer 

Gardener (men) 

Retail and shop clerk 


Lawyer 

Mason (men) 

Security guard 


Plumber (men) 

Mechanic (men) 
Carpenter (men) 

Concierge 

Undesirable Jobs 

Drug dealer 

Pickpocket 

Waste picker 


Taxi driver 

Drug dealer 

Domestic service worker 


Security guard 
Caregiver (women) 

Prostitute (women) 

(women) 

Day worker in agriculture 
Street cleaner 

Drug dealer 


a. All professions not marked were considered gender neutral by the focus groups. 


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communities or in alternative livelihoods, such as starting small businesses, and 
propelled women into the labor market to assume the role of provider or 
augment income that used to be generated solely by their husbands. Rather than 
the traditional unskilled jobs of fixing hair and dealing in second-hand clothes, 
the women discovered better options for paid work in the private sector, such as 
selling fish or charcoal, making and selling soap, refining palm oil, running a 
taxi service, and renting properties. 

The need for women in Firestone District to support their families^—and 
their new autonomy—has changed women’s views of their own capabilities. 
As a result, younger women are completely disregarding the gender assignment 
of jobs, do not automatically assume that unattractive jobs are only for women, 
and do not feel forced to take whatever work is available, like their mothers 
did. Inspired, too, by the successful and educated women on the upper rungs 
of the Firestone District ladder, the young women are finishing their education 
and envisioning good jobs not currently available in their community. 

This growing empowerment of the women, vis-a-vis the men’s (which is more 
moderate), is permeating other areas of their lives and influencing how they envi¬ 
sion the future. The women not only are working and saving but are engaging in - 
what other communities term exclusively male activities, such as going out in the 
evening or with friends, having affairs, and financially supporting their house¬ 
holds. Even though many in Firestone District disapprove of women stepping 
out of their traditional space, and even though these activities can indeed cause 
them to fall down their ladders, the younger women’s attitudes denote freedom 
from normative constraints. 

Sometimes changes in market signals induced changes in individual behav¬ 
iors of the focus group participants, which may slowly modify social norms 
around jobs. But the relationship between market trends, agency, and norm 
change is mediated by a complex set of deliberations that include valuations of 
material benefits, time costs, and reputational risks for different individuals in a 
household.® In harsher contexts, the gains of women’s economic agency are not 
at all clear, and the norms that surround these gains are more resistant to change. 

In countries and communities in the study, where context allows for more 
economic choices, young women were as likely as young men to feel both 
constrained and empowered to find a job. Women looked to their parents, 
partners, siblings, and peers for advice and saw in their experiences notions of 
what is possible for them. And they make choices weighing similar factors as 
men—opportunity, economic need, returns from their labor, and the best use 
of their talents and skills. In these more inviting contexts, young men and 
women alike expressed their desire to be independent, but are aware of respon¬ 
sibilities toward their families. “Nowadays both parents [mother and father] are 
working [and] ... women also spend most of their time at work,” explained a 
young woman from Umlazi township B in Durban. While another from this 
focus group elaborated, “Nowadays women no longer have to care for children 
by themselves. Their husbands and boyfriends are also accepting the responsi¬ 
bilities of caring for the children.” 


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Impact of Laws and Local Civic Action on Empowerment 

Markets are not the only structures that influence what is possible on the ladders 
of power and freedom. National policies, local governing bodies, state agencies, 
and community-based organizations also play a role in shaping local opportuni¬ 
ties and the chmate for women’s inclusion and influence in the public sphere. We 
unfortunately had limited time with the focus groups to explore these pathways 
for exercising agency and how they may interact with gender norms. What was 
shared, nevertheless, indicates a good deal of unrealized potential for policy 
action. 

We begin by reviewing focus groups’ accounts of their understanding and 
implementation of gender laws. As part of institutional attempts to alter prac¬ 
tices by directly sanctioning them, laws represent one of the resources for 
states to challenge prevalent norms. Next we move to discussions about the 
(limited] resources that are available to couples facing disagreement and 
conflict in their marriage or union. Viable exit strategies are central to reducing 
domestic violence. A final section discusses local political leadership and 
collective action. 

Equal Rights for Women? 

Facilitators asked the focus groups about their awareness of their country’s 
gender laws and any impacts from them. A majority of groups had at least 
some knowledge of one or two laws (see figure 5.6.a). Participants mentioned 
domestic abuse laws most often, but they also displayed varying degrees of 
knowledge about women’s rights to resist forced or early marriages; to obtain 
a divorce, custody of children, and child support; to own and inherit property; 
to claim equal pay and take family leave; to vote and run for office; and to 
access family planning. For most, however, awareness was extremely limited. 
“We have never heard of these laws,” stated a woman from Briceni District, 
Moldova; another in her group added, “School teachers probably know 
something about this.” Overall, the urban adult women’s focus groups 
demonstrated the most specific knowledge: “Yes, we are aware of the laws. 
There is the act against dowry and there is also the act against domestic 
violence. We learned about all these acts by going to self-help group (SHG) 
meetings. TV also tells us about the acts,” explained a woman from Nellore 
(Andhra Pradesh], India. 

As expected, women viewed the new laws and their impacts more favorably 
than men (figure 5.6.b]. “Men used to beat us and everything would just carry 
on as normal. But now we can report them to the police,” announced a woman 
from rural Ngonyameni, South Africa, when asked about her knowledge and 
views of the new gender laws in her country. Another from her group countered, 
however, that “we just hear about the laws on the radio, but they do not apply in 
this community.” Like other progressive forces, local awareness and passive or 
active support for laws may co-exist alongside normative views that accept, 
for instance, violence against women or men’s claims to full property rights in 


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We understand that there are laws establishing the rights of women, hut most 
of us do not take them seriously. As men, we are the heads of the family. In 
the past, no one knew about these laws, and women respected their husbands. 
Now, because of these laws, women try to control their husbands, which is not 
good. 

—Village man, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea 


I’ve heard of parental leaves for the fathers. It’s good when men take on some 
of the responsibility of caring for the children. I think they will make use of it 
in our generation. 

—Rural young woman, Martynice, Poland 


cases of inheritance or divorce. In some contexts, nevertheless, women perceived 
the laws as helping them. According to young women in Paro, Bhutan, “there is 
less harassment of women now and men have to think twice before they divorce 
their wife or have extramarital affairs. Such behavior may come with a big cost 
for them because of the law.” 

Young women from rural Malangachilima village, Tanzania, could recall 
several of their rights; “Yes, we all have to go to school. We can inherit prop¬ 
erty like men. Men should not beat us and, if they do, we can take them to 
court. We can be politicians.” Yet earlier, when we asked this focus group 
about control of assets and inheritance, they explained that men control most 
possessions in a household and that “the eldest son is the chief heir.” Any land 
a woman may inherit from her family is taken care of by the eldest son 
(or next man in line) because women leave their village to marry, have 
children, and cannot manage the property. In this sense, the new laws may 
embody ideals that are quite removed from the actual choices and possibilities 
for women. 

Still, in Liberia and other countries in the sample, some men openly admitted 
that they no longer beat women because they fear going to jail. “Every day, there 
used to be an incidence of rape, but now there is less. The use of fast-track courts 
has made it more alarming for men to be associated with rape. Most men violated 
young girls through ‘cash violence,’” stated a young man from the capital city of 
Monrovia. In Emputa village, Tanzania, urban women proclaimed that the new 
laws mean they are investing more in their assets; “They [the laws] have assisted 
us because we have worked hard and now don’t lose everything. For example, 
when you leave the man’s home, you divide the property and can go with some¬ 
thing to begin your new life.” But another woman from Emputa village made 
clear that she has been waiting for three years for the government to take any 
action against her violent husband. 


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Figure 5.6 New Gender Laws 



general knowledge knowledge knowledge 



Note: For both figures: Data from 388 focus groups. 


The men’s focus groups, along with a number of the women’s, expressed 
mixed views about the laws, often indicating that they were ineffective or disre¬ 
garded. “Just show me, please, a man who has been punished for his violence—no 
one,” affirmed a man from Moldova. In Levuka, Fiji, a village man contended that 
the laws “may be implemented in towns and cities, but not here.” Women in 
Tanzania and Sudan described weak enforcement of laws prohibiting female 
genital cutting and, in Poland, women reported that equal pay rules are “ignored 


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Structures of Opportunity and Structures of Constraint 


SO often. The men always receive more. They receive all the add-ons [benefits] 
and bonuses.” A man from Nsenene village, Tanzania, maintained that “for me, 
I think such laws have spoiled our women. They have become big-headed and 
unmanageable at home and in society. And their daughters are learning the same. 
If we want respect and discipline, we need to revise such laws.” 

However, not all is discouraging news. There is a desire for gender equality 
that springs from the influence of changes occurring in both the private and 
public spheres. For some of the focus groups, the notion c^f gender equality is 
simply lauded as a constraint on misbehavior and harm, but the majority per¬ 
ceived that gender equality embodies the highest ideals of their societies. For 
women in Samte, Bhutan—Sisum’s village, whose story opens part 1 of the 
report—who reported prc^blems of violence against them, gender equality 
“means everything a woman dreams of; it is a dream come true.” Others in this 
group added that gender equality would bring a “better life,” “peace and less 
domination,” and shared decision-making. Some of the focus groups, mainly 
rural men and to a lesser extent urban men, felt that the notion of gender equal¬ 
ity violates cherished values and traditions, and perhaps fuels rather than eases 
violence against women. Yet, overall the focus group narratives suggested that, 
with investment in stronger enforcement combined with building greater 
awareness about the need for and intent of the laws, there is significant 
unrealized potential for gender legislation to alter women’s and men’s views of 
gender equality. 

Do Institutions Work? Where to Turn for Help 

The focus groups offered discouraging accounts about the enforcement of laws 
and other community resources for addressing family conflict, such as divorce or 
disagreements, that cannot be resolved behind closed doors. When the focus 
groups were asked where local couples turn for help with marital disputes, the 
number one response was family members (figure 5.7], followed by formal state 
institutions or local governments, although their presence is more marked in 
urban than in rural settings. 

Specifically for divorce, for example, both young adult and adult focus 
groups across the sample indicated that getting a divorce is difficult or 
simply unacceptable for couples in their communities. This local institutional 
reality, where informal mechanisms and traditional gender norms still pre¬ 
vail, is important for understanding just how limited women’s possibilities 
are for exiting abusive relationships. The pressures to resort to family or 
other informal networks are also why central government laws, policies, and 
programs—as important as they are for gender equality—often have less 
effect than expected. Rather than using the formal justice system, which 
may not even have a physical presence in or near many of the study 
communities, most participants explained that parents, in-laws, extended 
family, community elders, and local “reconciliation committees” (specific to 
Vietnam] all try to mediate to avoid a temporary or permanent separation 
due to violence in the home. 


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There is no divorce, unless the husband kicks out the wife. 

—Urban man, neighborhood of Kragujevac, Serbia 


Figure 5.7 Where People Turn for Help with Family Conflict 



■ Urban ■ Rural 

Note: Data from 388 young adult and adult focus groups. 


In a semi-rural community of Ngonyameni, South Africa, according to the 
women’s focus group, the new gender laws “have changed nothing here. We do 
not have any job opportunities, our husbands assault us, and most of the time the 
tribal court favors the man. So really nothing has changed. These laws apply only 
to urban areas.” Similarly, in rural East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, 
women said that neither the police nor the churches will get involved in domes¬ 
tic violence matters. And while they mentioned that non governmental organiza¬ 
tions (NGOs) can help women get access to the courts, a young woman claimed 
that “most women are afraid of their husbands and do not pursue claims in the 
District Court for maintenance.” In Sigatoka, Fiji, women reported that “nobody 
divorces in our village. You can’t just fight with your husband and then want to 
divorce. This is a Fijian village. There is always a way to solve marital 
disagreements.” 

Focus groups of both women and men made plain that individuals or couples 
seeking temporary or permanent separation are strongly discouraged by peer 
pressure, community opinions, and threats of unfair treatment. Women face 
complete destitution, permanent separation from their children (“the children 
don’t belong to her, they belong to her husband”], and lasting ostracism from the 
community. Bride price and dowries that pass assets across family networks and 
down to husbands or wives further complicate divorce processes. In both Papua 


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New Guinea and the Republic of Yemen, women referred to bride prices and 
expensive dowries as impediments to divorce: “It’s hard for a woman to get a 
divorce in this community because if the bride price is paid it makes it difficult 
for the woman to leave” [a women’s focus group in Western Highlands Province, 
Papua New Guinea], Religion, both Christianity and Islam, imposes restrictions 
on divorce in a number of the sample countries. 

Where official channels are an option—mainly in some of the better-off urban 
communities—focus groups indicated that they are employed only as a last 
resort, when family and other informal local institutions have been tapped and 
failed, and then only for the most extreme circumstances. “A justifiable reason is 
if a woman was terrorized by the husband. In this case, a woman can go to her 
parents’ home. She can call the police or some social service, but these actions 
are justified only in case of great violence,” explained a woman from urban 
Kragujevac, Serbia. A young man from Hoang Mai District, Hanoi, Vietnam, 
hinted that the reluctance to use formal mechanisms, until all other options had 
been exhausted, was less because of distrust in the formal civic institutions than 
because of the economic cost of involving them: 

Many couples who get divorced negotiate with each other for child custody and 
property because otherwise they have to pay fees if the court is involved. In cases 
where they cannot reach an agreement, they look for help from relatives or friends. 
Women often turn to the Women’s Union for help if relatives fail. In the end, if 
nobody can help solve the dispute, the court makes a decision according to mar¬ 
riage, family, and other laws. 

Men and women made clear how essential local institutions are for delivering 
gender equality in difficult situations. In the many contexts where local power 
inequalities are strong, and credible threats of violence to women underpin them, 
women’s access to formal institutions may often be tightly restricted. Yet, the 
continued reliance on the traditional informal mechanisms to uphold laws and 
resolve disputes so often leaves women persistently disadvantaged and vulnera¬ 
ble. Taken together, these are key processes by which inequitable and excluding 
power structures resist change.^ Thus, even where a nation’s constitution may 
guarantee equal rights, and laws and regulations have been enacted that are 
strongly in the public interest and enjoy widespread support, local structures and 
normative behaviors that perpetuate gender inequalities may nevertheless 
endure. Without strong state capacities for enforcement matched by broad-based 
knowledge of the laws, formal legal, legislative, and regulatory reforms are 
unlikely to be effective. 

Whose Voice Counts? Local Political Leadership and Civic Action 

Many women’s ladders in our sample conveyed that—in addition to participating 
in their local economies and feeling empowered by this—women are gaining 
more and more access to the formal political and civic institutions in their com¬ 
munities. In the 97 communities of the focus groups, 24 urban and rural women 
were elected leaders, up from a total of 10 a decade ago. Opportunities for 


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185 


Sometimes having better education or better access to political leaders or local 
officials also helps you move up the ladder [from step 1 to step 2]. 

—Urban woman, Nellore (Andhra Pradesh), India 


collective action also appear to be flowering, especially for women, but the link 
between collective action and empowerment is not as clear-cut as women’s 
political inclusion.® 

A quarter of the 24 elected women in the focus groups hailed from Liberia. 
The young women and girls in these focus groups frequently named their presi¬ 
dent, Ellen Johnson Sirleafj as their role model. And in urban Firestone District, 
men noted that 10 years ago not a single woman held a local position of authority, 
but now, “people attend community meetings and women are very much 
involved. ... The level of development now is enhanced by women’s participa¬ 
tion.” And, in Tewor District, Liberia, young women reported that, although their 
town is now more than 20 years old, it only started building a new high school 
when a woman became the local commissioner. A woman in Thimphu, Bhutan, 
also pointed out benefits of women in pohtical power: “Women representing 
their community as local leaders have also helped bring issues related to women 
into public forums.” In the ladders of the Indian focus groups, a common attri¬ 
bute of women on the top step is holding leadership positions in their village or 
neighborhood self-governance institutions. Beaman et al. (2009, 2012) find that 
a community in India with a decade of experience with women leaders (who 
emerged after gender quota requirements were enacted in 1993) can erase the 
bias in men’s perceptions that they are automatically better leaders than women 
and close the gender gap in educational outcomes. 

The contributions of civic networks to movements up the ladders are less 
clear-cut in our dataset. From key informants’ reports to the field researchers, we 
find a median of 14 different local civic groups per community in the urban 
sample, and a median of 10 in the rural sample, but the numbers vary signifi¬ 
cantly. In urban Mongar District, Bhutan, women said that the factors that help 
them move up their ladder include “exposure [to successful women and infor¬ 
mation],” “advocacy,” “nonformal education [such as training],” and local devel¬ 
opment projects that have gender targets. As discussed in chapter 4, focus groups 
also mentioned informal rotating savings groups (like the savings and credit 
cooperatives [SACCOs] in Malangachilima) and more formal SHGs, and leader¬ 
ship roles in them, as helpful for climbing the ladder. But overall, these civic 
supports are not that prevalent among the mobility factors. 

With the exception of religious institutions in some contexts, economic 
groups generally outnumber other forms of grassroots organizations in our 
sample. Beyond the ladder exercise, focus group responses to specific questions 
about sources of credit and local producer or trade groups revealed gaps and 
disappointments. The large majority of focus groups indicated that economic 
groups were absent, ineffective, or accessible to only a few residents in their 

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communities. And, even when they perform well, the economic groups are 
often more helpful to women than men. In Comendador, the Dominican 
Republic, for instance, the women said, “There are associations, but they have 
no economic projects and they don’t help women.” In Nsenene village, 
Tanzania, where women are outperforming men on the ladders, a man 
remarked, “Women get loans from institutions, such as FINCA, PRIDE, and 
local SACCOs. They can borrow money and do business. We men can have 
nothing to do with such initiatives, so we are left behind.” Many women’s and 
men’s groups, in fact, commented on how the men are excluded from many 
lending and savings opportunities. One woman in Nellore [Andhra Pradesh], 
India, stated, “Men don’t get loans these days. If they need a loan, they are asked 
to bring their wife for a guarantee.” Another in the same group added, “Men 
have no credibility these days.” 

In the eight “high mobility” communities with extensive twin climbing, like 
Jaipur and Malangachilima, there are many reports about the vitality of local 
economic organizations. In Cusco Province, Peru, a village with twin mobility 
on the ladders of its focus groups, they described a farmer’s group comprised 
of women that meets three times weekly to take their produce to the nearby 
town market. And a governmental Vaso de Leche [Glass of Milk] program, 
which provides nutritional support to poor young children and pregnant 
mothers, is run by local women. In Koudipally Mandal [Andhra Pradesh], India, 
another community where both women and men are climbing in large 
numbers, there are 22 SHGs, which receive support from external governmen¬ 
tal, civic, and private sector agencies and are widely considered an important 
resource for local women’s awareness-raising, solidarity, and economic 
initiatives. 

In Kalahandi, a tribal village in Odisha, India, also with high twin mobihty on 
its ladders, the women said that they are moving up their ladder because, unlike 
in the past, they are now saving money and taking out loans in their SHGs. The 
women also reported that their SHGs help create strong bonds between women 
of lower and higher castes, when before they would not sit together in 
meetings. 

The mixed reports about economic groups are also reflected in performance 
on the ladders. At first glance, figure 5.8 reveals that, as with civic groups in gen¬ 
eral, there are more economic groups present in urban settings. In the cities in 
our sample, the focus groups with ladders showing twin climbing described 
numerous economic groups, which may also be present [albeit in smaller num¬ 
bers] in sample locales where both men and women perceive disempowerment. 
In rural communities where women are rising on the ladders, economic groups 
are more numerous, but they practically disappear where women report disem¬ 
powerment. No clear patterns emerge for rural men. 

When we asked the focus groups about their hopes for their communities and 
their children, the call for jobs and economic interventions emerges by far as the 
top desire. In Nellore [Andhra Pradesh], India, a woman argued, “Life can be very 
different if there is marketing assistance for the products a woman can make 


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187 


Figure 5.8 Median Economic Groups (Producer, Trade, and Finance) in Different 
Empowerment Contexts 





Urban (n = 50) 


■ Twin climbing 

■ Women climbing, men falling 



Rural (n -42) 


■ Twin falling 

□ Men climbing, women falling 


Note: Data from 184 adult focus groups. The Sudanese ladders are missing from this analysis because the women's focus 
group did not conduct the sorting exercise. 


at home.” And in rural Koudipally Mandal [Andhra Pradesh], India, a woman 
expressed hope that a factory will be built nearby, “so that the younger genera¬ 
tion will have better job opportunities.” Help with farming is the wish voiced by 
a young man of rural Sumadija District, Serbia: “A lot depends on the local gov¬ 
ernment, if only they would invest in agriculture and in the villages. This is where 
my hope lies.” In rural Kharef District, the Republic of Yemen, where girls are 
now attaining more education, women believe that “education will improve our 
status in the future,” and they hope “our children find jobs and our daughters 
become teachers.” 

Focus groups also wanted better public services in their communities, calling 
variously for schools, health clinics, clean water, roads, public transportation, and 
police. In Floresti District, Moldova, like other communities, women wished for 
free and accessible education and more job opportunities for their daughters and 
sons. In the village of Naw Da (Parwan), Afghanistan, where there is no school 
for girls, an adolescent girl suggested, “If there is vocational training for young 
women in the community, we will learn something. With this, we can earn an 
income and change our lives.” In River Nile State, Sudan, women hoped for leg¬ 
islative policy to address problems of “women facing harassment while moving 
around the community and region.” In East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, 
a young woman lamented that her village did not pool funds to sponsor students 
seeking higher education, and another one spoke of educating daughters so they 
“do not make the same mistakes” or “get pregnant early and miss out on oppor¬ 
tunities.” In Thimphu, Bhutan, a young woman pointed out that “education and 


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awareness may be the right tools to make both men and women use more family 
planning services.” And both younger and older women expressed a need for 
daycare. 

Some focus groups called for interventions to increase awareness of and 
support for women’s rights, or to reduce the problems facing men that per¬ 
haps prevent more empowerment for women. To strengthen their village, for 
example, women of Zabibu village, Tanzania, hoped to “stand for office and 
participate in various forms of leadership in our community and country at 
large.” Or in Kim Dong District, Vietnam, women wanted to see “more poli¬ 
cies to ensure women’s rights and more job opportunities for women.” In rural 
Ngonyameni, South Africa, young people face heavy school dropout, jobless¬ 
ness, drug problems, and early pregnancies. In addition to more economic 
opportunities, the young men’s focus group there thought sports or other 
recreational facilities may help them stop their risky behaviors and take their 
education more seriously. Similarly, in a village of Red Sea State, Sudan, young 
women wanted their community to offer handicraft projects for them and 
build a sports club for the men. Focus groups also desired the happiness and 
safety of their families and communities. In the remote village of Jahran 
District, the Republic of Yemen, the young women’s “greatest wishes are 
marriage and employment.” 

Men’s and women’s aspirations for the future and their activities have to be 
congruent with their gender identity (see box 5.2]. These identities develop 
in relation to each other. As discussed in chapter Ij a good husband prefers 
that his wife not work. If she does, his role of provider—his masculine duty 
and thus status—may be questioned by the community. “Now we need to find 
work and jobs. ... Based on the present economic situation of the community, 
there is no work for men. If someone wants to help the community, the first 
step is to help the men because they are responsible for food and the overall 
maintenance of the family” [adult men, Boyina Bagh, Afghanistan]. Likewise, 
women’s identity is built around being a housewife or a mother and, when it 
comes to work for pay, women’s identities and associated duties take prece¬ 
dence or get translated into specific goals or jobs that align with such 
identities. 

In Naw Da, Afghanistan, the women placed 80 percent of themselves on 
the bottom rungs of their ladder, because women “do not have jobs, freedom, 
or education. They cannot go anywhere. They do not have income sources, 
nor is there a school they can attend. They cannot make decisions and their 
husbands are uneducated.” None of them has found a way to climb up their 
ladder in the past decade. In order to have more power and freedom, they 
felt that they needed to be supported in their efforts by the “government, 
NGOs, village elders, and the local mullah, who should know the rights of 
the women and push the men to accept these rights. In the present situation, 
we do not see any chance for women to change their lives.” These powerless 
and isolated women recommended that interventions start by changing 
men’s mind-sets. 


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Box 5.2 Public and Private Power 

The important shifts made by women into positions of public power, where they are possible, 
seem to occur independently of what happens in their private lives. Women carefully hold 
their public power in check when they step into their homes; they find they are unable to 
translate potential gains from their public roles into their personal lives. 

A 53-year-old woman from urban Ba Dinh District, Vietnam, explained this dilemma for 
women: "It is not that, if you are powerful in society, you should also have power at home. Of 
course, if you have power in society, you gain respect from your husband and children. But a 
woman should use her power properly, at the right time and in the right place. You should not 
bring power home and apply it in your family because then you may not be happy. Some 
women are powerful outside, but not in their family." 

In fact, gains in power outside the household do not always translate into domestic power. 
Sumitra is a 37-year-old woman from a village of Phulbani municipality in Odisha, India. She is 
the ward member of her village and a member of the local panchayat (council), and also par¬ 
ticipates at the district level. But in most ways her life is no different from any other woman's in 
her community. Her day begins at 5:00 a.m. with all the household work; after finishing that, 
she goes to her daily wage work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or 
to the rice paddy. Her husband also does daily wage work, but whatever he earns he spends 
on alcohol. The household is run on her income. Her evenings are frequently filled with verbal 
and physical abuse: "I don't remember one day that has ever ended peacefully. Most of the 
time, I and my children go to bed with empty stomachs because my husband throws away the 
cooked food in anger.This is the life I am living and yet people say I have political power." 

Her journey into politics started with the 2007 election, when members of the community 
nominated her to run for a ward seat on the council. For her own and her community's benefit, 
she ran and won the position as ward member. However, she is discouraged. She says that 
nothing has changed in her life nor she has contributed anything to her community in the past 
four years. She regularly attends her ward council meetings, for which she is paid INR 30 (Indian 
rupees) per meeting, but she does not see herself as empowered. "We women have power in 
name only. We cannot contribute to improving our lives or the lives of community members." 
She also noted, "If I don't work for a day or two, my family will starve.... My elected position has 
not improved my life in any way." She will not run in the next election. 

On the other side of the spectrum is Mrs. Latata, from Fiji, who is 71 years old and "the most 
senior member of the village women's group" (which has five members). She worked as a 
primary school teacher for 42 years, beginning her career when she was 24, and has become 
an agent of change by providing information about laws and assistance for women in her 
community who do not know about their rights or the legal system. Latata also teaches young 
girls to be critical, but not aggressive, in the solution of disputes. She feels that young girls can 
at least be introduced to thinking about things critically. "To be a leader, they need to have the 
'know-how'to handle problems.They need to know that when you have leadership skills, you 
can solve problems amicably and don't have to make a big deal about it. You don't have to be 
aggressive [to get your point across]; there is a way to deal with things and make your point, 
and to give your help in a way that respects other views." 

box continues next page 


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Box 5.2 Public and Private Power (continued) 

Latata not only promotes peaceful dialogue skills, which can be used as much in public as 
in private, but also teaches girls about their rights and legal issues. She recounts the story of a 
young woman "who, after she finished school, looked after her elderly parents. Her father 
eventually passed away, but told her that she would be able to survive on his pension, which 
was held in superannuation funds in the capital. The woman found out later that her father 
had not legally left his pension to her and had no clue how to access the money her father had 
left her. [The young woman] told me that she knew I was the only one who could help her." 
Latata contacted the proper offices in the capital on the young woman's behalf and facilitated 
the payments. "These are the sorts of deeds Latata feels she is able to do from the knowledge 
and the confidence she has learned from being part of a women's community group," explained 
another woman. 


Change Women Need 

When looking across this large dataset, it is clear that women’s life choices 
remain more restricted than men’s and that markets, local politics, public ser¬ 
vices, and civic action—in most communities—mainly reinforce rather than ease 
these inequalities. Weak local institutions and restrictive norms blunt the effects 
of broader progressive forces on women’s power and gender equality. On bal¬ 
ance, though, we see more evidence of rising aspirations and relaxation and 
change of norms in contexts where local markets are reported to be more 
dynamic. Women’s local political leadership also emerges as a significant force for 
women’s empowerment and gender norm change. And while community-based 
groups do not receive high marks on balance from focus groups, a strong pres¬ 
ence of economic collective action can make a difference, especially when paired 
with other supportive conditions. 

Women’s ability to work for pay, which most women participating in our 
study aspired to, may be one of the most visible and game-changing events in all 
communities. Women’s work, as the focus groups showed, has the potential to 
alter traditional definitions of gender roles, duties, and responsibilities, as well as 
the main components of the identity of both men and women. Yet, empower¬ 
ment and agency do not directly result from economic participation, but are 
supported by what women experience when leaving the home to join the mar¬ 
ket. Women gain a greater sense of self-efficacy, broaden their aspirations, and 
forge ways to reconcile their identity as workers with their identity as mothers. 
In Samtse, Bhutan, Sisum’s mountain village, a young woman saw herself “com¬ 
pleting law school and looking for a job as a lawyer’’ and another one believed 
she can be “a successful government servant.’’ 

Throughout this study we learned from the communities that the interplay of 
three forces influences gender equality: changes in the capacity to identify new 
opportunities and aspire to them, changes in the capacity to act and actively 
pursue those ideals or the use of those opportunities, and changes in the structure 


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191 


of opportunities and normative frameworks that constrain individuals. These 
three areas do not always move together. Nor, necessarily, do men’s and women’s 
perceived trends in empowerment grow in parallel. Also, women may feel more 
empowered, but there is little evidence in our data that this perception is 
matched by greater influence in their relations with men. Further complicating 
the linkages between the three forces, some norms may become more fluid in 
stressful economic times, and women’s new freedoms may again narrow when 
their households and communities become more prosperous, or when the poUti- 
cal climate changes for women’s roles. As Kabeer (1999) notes, access to new 
resources may open up new possibilities for women, but the use of such 
possibilities is not necessarily uniform. Women, as they revealed in their focus 
groups, are still heavily influenced by the normative elements inherent in what 
affords them status and a good reputation with their families and communities; 
in their social relations; and in their individual (and other women’s) histories, 
beliefs, and identities. 

There seems to be no simple pattern of more flexible gender norms routinely 
developing alongside the creation of more and better economic opportunities in 
our study communities. Neither do we necessarily find a stronger adherence to 
traditional norms among the sample communities that have seen fewer changes 
or experienced reversals in their economic situations. In the less vibrant com¬ 
munities, the market requirement for unskilled labor is opening doors for women 
and men alike, and this can sometimes break the grip of traditional gender norms. 
Gender norm change is also sometimes possible, independent of local market and 
institutional forces, and women’s own actions. For example, in contexts outside 
of our sample, such as in Senegal, community-based public awareness campaigns 
have been able to stop the accepted practice of female genital cutting (Mackie 
2000); and in Afghanistan, community awareness projects have successfully 
reduced the incidence of early marriage (Malhotra et al. 2011). 

While an individual woman’s view and ability to act is relevant, sometimes a 
critical mass is needed to break a cycle. As Fogli and Veldkamp (2008) show in 
their study of the transition of women into the United States’ labor force in the 
20th century, local transmission of information generates change. Women learn 
from other women’s experiences: as the women’s focus groups told us, they learn 
from their mothers, their mother’s peers, and their own peers. They learn from 
what happens to other women’s children, and in others’ households, and in 
communities. 

The process of gender norm change appears to be uneven and challenging. 
When only a few women manage to break with the established norms, uncer¬ 
tainty reigns and traditional norms are not challenged and may even be rein¬ 
forced. Also, the easy co-existence of new and old norms means that households 
in the same community can vary markedly in how much agency women can 
exercise, and that women often feel less empowered when the opinions and 
values shared by their family members and communities stay with traditional 
norms. Moreover, the lack of gains in women’s empowerment is not always due 
to overt resistance to it; in many cases, it is due to a passive, underlying view in 


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the community that “this is just the way things are here.” This view commands 
adherence and we find it acknowledged again and again in accounts by different 
communities in the study. Even if actual practice has changed and is different 
[e.g., many women claimed some measure of economic independence), and even 
if many have let go of the norm (men must be the sole providers), the persistent 
belief^—and reality—is that status and respect continue to be governed by the 
traditional gender norms. These dynamics keep change from happening. 

The women’s stories explored here in both more and less dynamic communi¬ 
ties unrelentingly show that, although many women have higher expectations 
and more chances to work, to run for elected office, or to engage in community 
organizations, all too often they must still accommodate their public roles to 
conservative gender norms. At the same time, other women who have limited or 
poor opportunities to participate in the public life of their communities may be 
able to negotiate gender norms in ways that increase their agency, and eventually, 
some other outcomes, too. 

Notes 

1. See Fehr and Hoff (2011) for a thoughtful discussion of the literature on circum¬ 
stances under which norms and preferences may be more malleable than often 
recognized. 

2. Also noted by Duflo and Udry (2003); Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales (2006); and 
others when looking at household bargaining and female labor force participation. 
Both studies highlight the impact that beliefs and preferences have on economic 
behavior and thus economic outcomes. Also see Munshi and Rosenzweig (2006) for 
an example of how traditions surrounding men’s caste-based occupational net¬ 
works in Mumbai limit young men’s returns from education more than young 
women’s. 

3. Most of the key informants interviewed for each sample community were local offi¬ 
cials, elected leaders, or civic leaders, although business leaders and teachers some¬ 
times worked with our teams and completed the surveys, too. 

4. This difference is not as stark among older adults in the study. 

5. Specifically West Bank and Gaza, the Republic of Yemen, and Sudan, but also Umlazi 
township A in South Africa, Hyderabad in India, and East Jakarta in Indonesia. 

6. Gary Becker (1981) conceives of economic models that account for household spe¬ 
cialization of human capital and division of labor. For wider reviews of this literature, 
see Doss (2011), Alderman et al. (1995), and Dasgupta (2000). 

7. See, for example. North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009). 

8. In their extensive review of community-driven development programs, Mansuri and 
Rao (2012) find extensive problems in targeting the poor and meeting performance 
objectives, but they also mention more promising results from “a couple of recent 
studies of community-based projects, which provide microcredit, cash grants, and 
business- or livelihood-related training...” (11). Their review of community-driven 
development evaluations finds elite capture in communities that are “remote from 
centers of power, have low literacy, are poor, or have significant caste, race, and gender 
disparities” (6); and local social capital that “tends to melt away when the [project] 
incentives are withdrawn” (11). 


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Final Thoughts 


World Development Report 2012 showed that gender equality and economic 
development can reinforce or hinder each other through complex social and 
economic processes. The opportunities available to women and men—and their 
ability to take advantage of them—are determined by social norms, gender roles, 
beliefs about their abilities, and their assets, as well as by the social expectations 
of the communities and countries they live in. While we see significant progress 
in many places, gender disparities are still evident, particularly regarding 
empowerment and agency. 

Data analysis from standard nationally representative surveys has not provided 
much information on norms and their effects, which World Development Report 
2012 identified as resistant to change and potentially hindering the advancement 
of gender equality. In our study, given the nature of our data, we were able to 
look deeper into social norms, and found that gender norms aflect decision¬ 
making at the household and individual levels, as well as the functioning of 
markets and formal and informal institutions. Also, just observing changes in 
outcomes, such as increasing female labor force participation, does not always 
reveal the effects of these norms and raises more questions. Are more women 
working due to increasing labor market opportunities and their gains in 
education, despite rigid gender norms? Are gender norms dynamic and relatively 
flexible depending on the economic context? 

We began our qualitative research into gender norms to explore the 
relationship between social norms and women’s and men’s agency. We hoped to 
identify a few simple patterns suggestive of causality that could also help 
practitioners identify missing or new areas for interventions to encourage gender 
equality. In this respect, however, our research proved too ambitious and we did 
not find any “silver bullets” for development intervention. 

We did, however, illuminate a range of variables and complex interactions that 
determine the space for renegotiating or “bending” the gender norms that 
influence behaviors and affect the pace of change and growth of men’s 
and women’s agency. When households and communities find ways—or 


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the need—to relax and change inequitable gender norms, we saw that men’s and 
women’s individual and collective agency can increase and reinforce one another. 

One of the more consistent findings across the 97 research sites is the 
universality and resilience of the norms that underpin gender roles. Given the 
diversity of the communities and people participating in the focus groups, 
we expected to find a wider spectrum of attitudes and roles, and in particular 
expected to observe more flexibility in gender roles in areas with greater 
economic dynamism. While we did uncover some softening of norms in urban 
areas relative to rural areas, and by younger generations relative to older 
generations, these differences were less striking than the similarities across sites. 
In every research location, women and men of all generations identified the 
dominance of women’s domestic role and men’s breadwinning role as absolutely 
core to female and male identities. 

The good husband defined by the focus groups is almost entirely characterized 
by his income-earning capacity and household authority role, and the negative 
behaviors he should not engage in “too much,’’ such as drinking, womanizing, and 
gambling. On the other hand, the good wife is strictly defined by a long list of 
submissive qualities and household tasks, including being nurturing and gentle 
mannered; tending to the house; caring for the children, the husband, and the 
elderly; cooking well; and also contributing to the household income if and when 
needed. The idealized visualization of a good wife (or a good husband) is almost 
impossible to find in a single woman (or man); for women, such a stringent 
definition, and the demand for adherence to it, may be due to high levels of stress 
and poverty, and for women and men alike, the profound attachment of the 
man’s identity to a job and income are key. 

Some of the focus groups gave evidence of gender norms changing, albeit 
slowly and incrementally, with new economic opportunity, markets, and 
urbanization (chapter 2). In some locales and among younger age groups, 
participants described relaxation of gender norms where the structure of 
opportunities that increase women’s access to jobs does not curtail men’s 
opportunities and occurs with other changes, such as improvements in public 
institutions. Economic roles for women often creep into their domestic role, and 
in some places, younger men even take on some narrow domestic responsibilities. 
What is striking is the glacial pace of this change relative to the pace of change 
in contextual factors. Gender norms are being contested, bent, and relaxed, but 
not necessarily broken fully and changed. Younger people may delay compliance 
to a later point in time, but the norms and the expectations around them do 
not change. 

The process of changing gender norms is not always peaceful or harmonious, 
and the uncertainty around prospective change may lead to gender-based 
violence or new forms of gender inequality. At the household level, we saw that 
space to negotiate a shift in norms in order to intensify agency is most commonly 
expanded in the constant dialogue among men and women implicit in everyday 
life. Tension is commonly associated when a woman participates as an equal in 
these exchanges, and we chiefly focused on relaxation of norms that permit 


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women’s roles to expand into men’s roles in the household rather than the 
reverse. (There is little opposition within a household, for example, if a man opts 
to take on more domestic work.] Sometimes this tension can become violent. 
Violence and the threat ot violence or abuse play a role in reinforcing the status 
quo and in discouraging women’s efforts to challenge existing expectations 
and norms. 

Despite the resilience of gender norms, our study found evidence of women’s 
agency increasing in some strategic life choices (chapter 3). The most powerful 
results in terms of norms evolving toward gender equality and resulting in greater 
agency are in the expansion of education for girls (and women]. However, they 
remain more constrained by household preferences and strict gender roles in 
how many years they can attend school and which fields they can study. Younger 
generations of women are also demanding more control over marriage and child¬ 
bearing than older generations, and they are participating more and more in these 
decisions. And, while in many cases this control does not translate into outcomes, 
young women—and young men—harbor different aspirations than their parents, 
such as having fewer children, getting more education, and marrying later. The 
structure of opportunities and the social pressures surrounding them do not 
always allow their aspirations to materialize, but often they achieve a 
middle point. 

Exercises in the study to look at levels of) and changes in, power and freedom 
suggest positive progress for women, but less for men (chapter 4], which is partly 
explained by their different starting points. Men as the traditional power holders 
are accustomed to having more freedom than women. Men report fewer 
improvements in their sense of agency, but they benchmark their gains and losses 
against a higher base line. When compared to men, women in our study in 
general feel more empowered than 10 years ago. The rising availabiUty of 
economic opportunities, increasing levels of education, and growing control over 
reproductive choices have been central in enabling women to gain more 
decision-making power in their lives. 

Looking at the ladders of freedom and power created by the women and men 
in the study, we found that men tended to equate power more directly and more 
narrowly with their economic success. In this respect, many have been disap¬ 
pointed in their ability to find jobs they want to do and acquire the incomes they 
aspired to. Communities where both men and women feel more empowered 
now than 10 years ago were a small fragment of the sample, but they generally 
experienced more rapid economic growth (and consequently more job opportu¬ 
nities] and had more women in decision-making positions in public institutions 
and private organizations. 

Given that norm change is slow and incremental rather than seismic, what 
role is there for development interventions to influence movement toward 
gender equality and normative change? Earlier chapters detail examples of the 
variables and combinations of variables that expand or constrain the space for 
renegotiating norms. The focus group discussions suggested that the interplay 
between desire for change at the individual level, the opportunities to effect 

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change at the household level, and the support or lack of support for changes in 
norms at the community level represent a critical set of interactions that can 
accelerate or delay shifts in attitudes. On the individual level, women’s desires to 
operate outside prescribed norms may be high, low, or non-existent. Within a 
home, depending on the personalities and views of household members, tolerance 
for behaviors outside the norms may be considerable or absent. A community 
may actively show support for or sanction those pushing against traditional 
norms of behavior. 

A motivated woman or man in a household with high tolerance tor bending 
traditional norms in a community where others are doing likewise may more 
easily incorporate making decisions and choices outside the normal range for 
their gender. The same woman or man in a more traditional household may face 
considerable domestic unrest or violence. The same man or woman in a com¬ 
munity that is resistant to behaviors that threaten traditional roles may find 
themselves isolated and without social capital beyond the boundaries of the 
household. It is not enough to generate change in a single area. As women learn 
and benefit from new gender norms, their intra-household bargaining position 
must also improve at the same time. Women’s aspirations need to be accompanied 
by opportunities to realize them and interventions that facilitate the accumula¬ 
tion of assets and capabilities. Empowerment thus requires a combination of 
factors to become a reality. And individual attempts to change norms may fail 
more often than not, especially if they try to reallocate power. 

At the individual level, education, self-efficacy, and the ability to aspire 
emerged from the focus groups as important factors with respect to the capacity 
to negotiate change for greater agency. In particular, the education of boys and 
girls—beyond its role in building human capital—is crucial in shaping norms. 
In multiple discussions, adolescent boys and girls described how education 
exposed them to new ideas and knowledge, enlarging their capacity to analyze 
and encouraging critical scrutiny of established gender relations and the status 
quo. These discussions reaffirmed what is already known about the intergenera- 
tional transfer and reproduction of norms within households. Education fosters 
learning away from the household environment where gender roles are played 
out in every interaction and action. The research team realized the importance 
of ensuring that school curricula offer gender-neutral learning opportunities. 

Several sections of the research probed nearly universal patterns that emerged 
among young people’s aspirations. They wanted higher levels of education than 
the current average in their communities, better jobs than commonplace in their 
communities, marriage at an older age than normal in their communities, fewer 
children at a later age than usual, and so on. When prompted to further describe 
what they thought were realistic outcomes, their predictions fell somewhere 
between current practices and their aspirations. This capacity to visualize a 
different path from the existing, accepted course to even a pragmatic midpoint 
is a positive feature that development interventions can build on. 

Women’s and men’s success in achieving what they aspire to often depends 
on factors outside the individual’s control (see the second part of chapter 4), 


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199 


mostly in social and political structures. Evaluations of development interventions 
indicate that projects targeted at young people can profoundly affect their ability 
to aspire and, by extension, to make decisions that may be more empowering. 

The threat of violence or abuse reinforces the status quo and discourages 
women’s eflorts to challenge existing norms. The team, during the research, 
recognized that action to reduce violence and abuse within the households had 
both short-term and long-term benefits. Lowering the threat immediately 
improves physical and psychological welfare in the household, and also 
introduces a safer environment for women to participate in household discussions 
and decisions on household actions that can shift the balance of power in the 
household. We also found many cases, however, where laws promoting gender 
equality were in place, but implementation in practice was deficient, making 
women feel even more disempowered. 

The norms that uphold women’s heavy domestic workload are powerfully 
reproduced in the household, where girls mirror their mothers’ unending 
responsibilities and long, isolated hours at home. In contrast, men spend work 
and free-time hours in activities outside the household, which are reflected in 
boys’ time-use patterns and easy interactions in the community and wider world. 
Even when girls go to school and boys help out a little in the house, the girls’ 
workload in the house does not change or lessen. The time that women and girls 
must spend on domestic responsibilities constrains their time available for 
activities outside the house; earning income (which gives women more voice and 
clout in the household], socializing and engaging in public institutions [which 
puts them in contact with extended social networks that support non-traditional 
behavior], and attending school [which enhances their knowledge and nurtures 
their aspirations]. 

At the community level, the focus groups pointed out that the impact of moral 
support—whether from a community or a social network—for women is critical 
for women’s empowerment and perseverance to gain agency. Their efforts to bend 
roles in their own households are less stressful when they can talk to a neighbor 
and get constructive advice, for example, about “getting a husband or mother-in- 
law to agree to let them work for pay outside the household.” Even when change 
is resisted by husbands or extended family, if other men and women in the same 
community are allowing women more control over assets and diversification into 
economic roles, then there is some sense that they can “ride a wave” in their nego¬ 
tiations for change. This sense that a critical mass is developing can help accelerate 
reforms and has growing credibility in development project design. 

By extension, we expected that communities with vibrant local organizations 
would show a stronger sense of collective action in support of gender “norm- 
benders.” As chapter 4 suggests, however, community-based groups have a mixed 
record in supporting improvements in agency for women and men, despite their 
potential as networks for change. Development interventions work frequently 
with community groups, so the question arises whether they are the best places 
to generate a critical mass of support for women and men pushing the boundaries 
of entrenched norms around gender roles. 


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We found that regulations and laws promoting gender equality promoted 
some change when they were well-publicized and well-enforced, but outreach 
and public understanding of the laws—whether they criminalize gender-based 
violence, permit divorce, or support women’s inheritance rights—were very 
uneven. In general, people in urban areas had more knowledge of such laws and 
women were more in favor of these regulations than men. In none of the sample 
countries did we find either men or women to be really well-informed of their 
rights, entitlements, or obligations with respect to key laws intended to promote 
gender equality. Clearly, the countries in our research need more, and more 
effective, awareness-raising campaigns to promote knowledge and enforcement 
of these laws. 

Overall, our research offers new evidence that increasing women’s agency 
involves constant dialogue between social norms, empowerment, capacity to 
aspire, and the structure of opportunities. These findings strongly support 
World Development Report 2012 and suggest that direct intervention in 
all these domains can accelerate the improvements in agency offered by 
economic growth. 


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APPENDIX 


Methodological Note 


The field work behind On Norms and Agency (conducted under the title 
Defining Gender in the 21st Century] reached 97 urban and rural communities of 
Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, Fiji, India, 
Indonesia, Liberia, Moldova, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Poland, Serbia, South 
Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Vietnam, West Bank and Gaza, and the Republic 
of Yemen. Nearly 4,000 individuals from three generations participated in the 
study between June 2010 and March 2011. 

The rapid assessment explored trends in gender roles and norms and what the 
women and men participating said drives their major decisions for education, 
economic participation, and family formation. We set up small, same-sex 
discussion groups and asked their members to reflect on questions about these 
decisions, for example: Why and how did they decide to end their education? 
Are men and women better at different jobs? Do women and men save differ¬ 
ently? What makes a “good” husband or a “good” wife? We employed qualitative 
methods, which are appropriate for examining these questions because they 
permit exploration of multidimensional factors that need to be traced over time, 
as well as contextually grounded for sound interpretation of their meaning and 
significance in the lives of the sample women and men and their communities. 
These methods are the preferred approach for researching “how” and “why” 
questions given that they “allow investigators to retain the holistic and meaningful 
characteristics of real-life events” (Yin 2003, 3). Our research design also enabled 
us to explore commonalities and combinations of factors that affect gender 
norms and individual agency across sets of communities (Ragin 2008). 

We selected countries for the global study based on three criteria: First, we 
chose at least two countries in each world region.’ Second, we chose countries 
where World Bank country units had strong interest for the work to be con¬ 
ducted there and wanted to learn from the study and incorporate findings into 
their policy analyses and guidance activities. And the third criteria were countries 
where a local research team with the required expertise on qualitative data col¬ 
lection could be identified. Although the study samples are small and not repre¬ 
sentative of their general country or regional contexts, we designed them, at 


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Methodological Note 


the community level, to capture a mix of urban and rural contexts, as well as 
more modern and traditional gender norms. In every country, research teams 
fanned out into both middle-class and poorer neighborhoods of cities and towns, 
and into prosperous and poor villages. The final sample of communities is listed 
in table A.l. [Names of the communities in the study are pseudonyms or are 
referred to by districts.} 

Within the study communities, five different data collection tools were used: 
three structured focus group discussions [an interview guide was prepared for 
each age group; adults, young adults, and adolescents^}, one key informant 
interview centering on a questionnaire about the community with close- and 
open-ended questions, and one mini case study.^ [See table 1.2 in the Introduction, 
which summarizes the general topics covered with each method.} Focus groups 
lasted 2.5-3 hours on average. 

Because bias can sometimes be introduced by focus group dynamics, such as 
when more assertive group members dominate discussions, facilitators received 
training in additional measures to foster inclusive discussions that would capture 
a range of attitudes and experiences common in the community. We also set up 
single-sex focus groups of roughly similar ages, so participants would feel safe and 
comfortable and answer frankly. Further, on some key questions, focus group 
members had opportunities to respond in private and then volunteer to discuss 
their responses in the open [same-sex} group. 

Local researchers with extensive country knowledge and qualitative field 
experience led the focus groups. The field team members recruited to conduct 
the focus group discussions and interviews were generally experienced facilitators 
who received supplemental training and a detailed methodology guide in 
preparation for their field work. The methodology guide reviewed the study’s 
conceptual approach and sampling procedures, presented each of the study 
instruments, and discussed documentation and analysis techniques. 

As part of the field work in each site, facilitators interviewed local key 
informants to complete a community questionnaire, which provided extensive 
background information about the sample community. Key informants were 
community leaders, government officials, politicians, important local employers, 
business or financial leaders, teachers, or healthcare workers. The selection of the 
participants for the adolescent and young adult focus groups was based on spe¬ 
cific age criteria. The field teams also received instructions to compose the 
groups, as much as possible, to reflect the range of educational and livelihood 
experiences common in the community for that age group. 

We reiterated to the teams from the onset that this was a cross-country study. 
The teams had to balance concerns for responsiveness to the issues and pace of 
a specific group’s discussion with the global study’s need for a core set of data 
that could be compared systematically across all the focus groups across all the 
countries. The teams were trained by the core World Bank study team to follow 
standard methodological use of each data collection tool. Both facilitators and 
note-takers pretested all data tools, including country-level additions and 
adaptations. We asked the facilitators to stay as close as possible to the interview 


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Methodological Note 


203 


Table A.1 Communities in the Sample 


Country 

Location 

Name of community 

Afghanistan 

Rural 

Boyina Bagh (Kabul Province) 


Urban 

Shirabad Ulya (Kabul Province) 


Urban 

Karta-e Bakheter (Par\A/an Province) 


Rural 

Naw Da (Parwan Province) 

Bhutan 

Urban 

Thimphu District 


Rural 

Paro District 


Rural 

Samtse District 


Urban 

Mongar District 

Burkina Faso 

Urban 

Ouagadougou (capital city): two different communities 
interviewed in the same city 


Rural 

Sanmantenga (province) 


Rural 

Barsalogho (province) 

Dominican Republic 

Urban 

Santiago de los Caballeros (large city) 


Rural 

Comendador (municipality) 


Urban 

Flato Mayor (municipality) 


Urban 

Santo Domingo (large city) 

Fiji 

Urban 

Suva (capital city) 


Rural 

Naitasiri (province) 


Rural 

Sigatoka (province) 


Urban 

Lautoka (large city) 


Urban 

Levuka town (old capital of Fiji, city) 


Rural 

Labasa (province) 

India^ 

Rural 

Koudipally Manda/Kowdipalle (district, Andhra Pradesh state) 


Urban 

Nellore (large city, Andhra Pradesh state) 


Rural 

Velugodu (district, Andhra Pradesh state) 


Urban 

Hyderabad (large city) 


Urban 

Bhubaneswar (city, Odisha state) 


Urban 

Jaipur (city, Odisha state) 


Rural 

Kalahandi (district, Odisha state) 


Rural 

Phulbani (municipality, Odisha state) 

Indonesia 

Urban 

East Jakarta (large city) 


Urban 

Tangerang (large city) 


Rural 

Sungai Puar (district) 


Rural 

Nagari Bukik Batabuah (district) 

Liberia*’ 

Rural 

Tchien District 


Rural 

Tewor District 


Urban 

Buchanan (large city) 


Urban 

Greenville District 


Urban 

Firestone District 


Urban 

Harper District 


Urban 

Monrovia (large city) 


Rural 

Suakoko District 


Rural 

Zorzor 

Moldova 

Urban 

Balti (large city) 


Rural 

Briceni District 


table continues next page 


On Norms and Agency • http;//dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 







204 


Methodological Note 


Table A.1 Communities in the Sample (continued) 


Country 

Location 

Name of community 


Rural 

Floresti District 


Urban 

Ceadir-Lunga (large city) 

Papua New Guinea‘s 

Urban 

National Capital District 


Rural 

Morobe Province 


Rural 

Village near Buka (capital city of Bougainville District) 


Rural 

Milne Bay Province or Alotau 


Rural 

Village near Wewak (East Sepik Province) 


Rural 

Western Highlands Province 

Peru 

Urban 

Lambayeque Province 


Rural 

Cusco Province 


Rural 

Chiclayo (large city) 


Urban 

Saylla District 

Poland 

Rural 

Justynow village 


Rural 

Martynice village 


Urban 

Dobrowice (city) 


Urban 

Olsztyn (large city) 

Serbia 

Rural 

Sumadija District 


Urban 

Belgrade (capital city) 


Urban 

Kragujevac (large city) 


Urban 

Pomoravlje District 


Urban 

Sjenica (city) 

South Africa 

Urban 

Umlazi township A 


Urban 

Umlazi township B 


Rural 

Rural community (Ngonyameni area, Kwa-Zulu Natal) 


Rural 

Semi-rural community (Ngonyameni area, Kwa-Zulu Natal) 

Sudan (North) 

Urban 

Khartoum (capital city) 


Rural 

River Nile State 


Rural 

Blue Nile State 


Rural 

Al Fashir (capital city of North Darfur State) 


Rural 

Red Sea State 

Tanzania 

Urban 

Emputa village (Bukoba municipality) 


Urban 

Nsenene village (Bukoba municipality) 


Rural 

Malangachilima village (Dodoma region) 


Rural 

Zabibu village (Dodoma region) 

Togo 

Urban 

Assoli Prefecture 


Rural 

Ave Prefecture 


Urban 

Lome (capital city) 


Rural 

Tandjouare Prefecture 

Vietnam 

Urban 

Ba Dinh District (Hanoi) 


Urban 

Hoang Mai District (Hanoi) 


Rural 

Hung Yen District 


Rural 

Kim Dong District 

West Bank and Gaza 

Urban 

Neighborhood, Rafah Governorate 


Urban 

IDP camp (internally displaced persons), Rafah Governorate 


Urban 

Neighborhood, border area, Rafah Governorate 


table continues next page 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 






Methodological Note 


205 


Table A.1 Communities in the Sample (continued) 


Country 

Location 

Name of community 


Rural 

Dirbas, Hebron Governorate 


Urban 

University Quarter, Hebron 


Urban 

Old City, Hebron 

Yemen, Rep. 

Rural 

Jahran District (Dhamar Governorate) 


Rural 

Kharef District 


Urban 

Aden (large city) 


Urban 

Ba'adan (city) 


Note: Community names have been replaced with pseudonyms and/or moved to the next administrative level (municipality, 
district, or governorate) when the research site is smaller than 2,000 inhabitants. For cities, the name of the city is used to 
replace the name of the specific neighborhood. In the case of large cities, when possible, municipality or large neighborhood 
or other level was added as identifier. 

a. Two states were included in India, each one treated as a country with four communities each. 

b. Liberia was a pilot country. Double the number of required communities were surveyed. 

c. More communities were included due to diversity of provinces in Papua New Guinea. 


guides, so that they posed the same questions and created the same visuals. The 
facilitators also kept to the particular sequencing of the modules. 

With our encouragement, facilitators had license to probe more deeply into 
specific issues that cropped up in the focus groups. We asked them to let focus 
group participants reflect on and reply to more general questions first before 
exploring a subject in greater detail. For broad questions—such as, what does 
it mean to be a powerful woman in the community?—we gave them specific 
guidance on how to allow an open flow of answers, instead of guiding 
responses in particular directions. If participants met questions with silence or 
a subject appeared to be too sensitive for open discussion in a group, facilita¬ 
tors either (a) moved on to the next question and perhaps returned later to 
the topic, or [b) found alternative ways to address the issue, such as allowing 
them to answer in private or write confidential replies. We also deliberately 
designed the order of discussions to present more sensitive questions in later 
modules when greater rapport and trust had developed among members of the 
group. 

The facilitators introduced all focus groups and informants in the study to the 
objectives of the assessment, explained the type of information being solicited 
and how it would be recorded, emphasized that participation was entirely vol¬ 
untary with no adverse consequences for those who did not wish to participate, 
and described how they would ensure the confidentiality of participants’ answers 
(the data) and their anonymity. We made certain that participants understood 
that the study was not intended to directly change any policies or services affect¬ 
ing their communities and that they would not receive compensation, financial 
or otherwise, for joining the study. 

Some parts of the data collection required the study participants to reflect on 
earlier periods of time, and we identified a specific period. When facilitators asked 
participants to reflect back 10 years ago, they could assist their recall by substitut¬ 
ing a fixed reference year for the term “10 years ago” and linking the baseline year 

On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 





206 


Methodological Note 


to a major national event to strengthen their memories (for example, a natural 
disaster, a change of government, the end of a conflict, or an epidemic). 

We based several data collection modules on specific visual displays or mate¬ 
rial to encourage richer discussion, such as the ladders of power and freedom 
created by each group, list of characteristics for a good and bad wife and husband, 
and causes and consequences of domestic violence. For contexts where partici¬ 
pants’ literacy was limited, the research teams substituted symbols for text. For 
example, a face with a big smile was used to represent “very happy” to respond 
to a question on happiness in one of the modules. 

The closed-ended questions included in the focus group guide required 
individual responses from the group members, rather than a consensus response, 
so that the members of a group could not bias each other’s responses. The 
responses to these questions were recorded in a standardized spreadsheet 
(Microsoft Excel). 

We also electronically taped many focus group discussions, but due to limited 
budgets and limited time for full transcription, note-takers attending the discus¬ 
sions recorded the majority of the documentation. Regardless of recording, 
all focus groups included note-takers, and their notes were added to transcripts 
of focus groups findings. The note-takers, as well as facilitators, were the same sex 
as the participants in each focus group. 

The final dataset from the field work is narrative and numerical data. The 
study’s principal findings rest on systematic analysis of the content of the narra¬ 
tives, comprising more than 7,000 pages of text in the global dataset. The text 
was treated like a single database and coded with NVivo9, a social science 
software. We populated thematic nodes with portions of narrative text following 
a predetermined node tree designed by the lead research team. In addition, free 
nodes were inductively coded according to specific categories: generational 
differences, relevant information, notable case (or gem), rural-urban differences, 
and gender or generational differences. 

The closed-ended questions (where all participants gave their own opinions 
on a set scale of possible responses) were treated as a numeric dataset, where we 
used weighted frequencies and averages. Similar treatment was given to the data¬ 
base generated by the community questionnaire. Throughout this report, we give 
coding frequencies derived from NVivo—both the number of focus groups and 
number of mentions of a specific study topic—as guidelines for findings on 
certain themes. 

In order to understand specific pathways for explaining the change in levels of 
power and freedom (from the ladder of power and freedom activity presented in 
chapter 4), we developed a model for qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). 
QCA is based on a Boolean method of logical comparison that represents each 
case (which in this study was a community) as a combination of causal and 
outcome conditions (Ragin 2008). The analysis allows identification of different 
combinations of conditions that produce a specific outcome; in our study, this 
was the perceived changes in power and freedom during a 10-year period for 
women and men in a community. 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


Methodological Note 


207 


A separate tercile analysis was also undertaken with the ladder outcomes and 
presented in chapter 5. We applied a STATA tercile distribution function to the 
dataset of mobility indexes (calculated as the difference between the ladder 
mean step now and mean step 10 years ago]. The tercfles were assigned on a 
country-by-country basis. 

The global analysis phase of the rapid qualitative assessment was launched 
with an interactive writing workshop that brought together 18 of the 20 country 
team leaders with the study’s global assessment team at the Rockefeller Center 
in Bellagio, Italy, in September 2011. The opportunity to share country findings, 
to collaborate intensively on identifying important themes for the global report 
to address, and to reflect on strengths and weaknesses of the study methodology 
greatly facilitated the analysis of patterns, as well as the vital context-specific 
dimensions of gender norms, aspirations, and agency. 

Notes 

1. As defined by the World Bank: Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe 
and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, 
and South Asia. 

2. Adults were 25-60 years old, young adults 18-24, and adolescents 12-17. 

3. This was a detailed report of a finding that emerged as important for understanding 
gender norms or structures shaping economic decisions in that locality. 


References 

Ragin, C. C. 2008. Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond. Chicago, IL: 
University of Chicago Press. 

Yin, R. K. 2003. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. 3rd ed. Applied Social Research 
Methods Series, Vol. 5. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 


On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3 


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Agency, or our capacity to seize opportunities and make meaningful choices tj 
gender equality. Social norms—such as gender roles and the political and ecorft 
societies, communities, and households we live in—can restrict or enhance our agency. On Norms and 
Agency explores some of these power dynamics around gender relations from the perspectives of groups of 
men, women, boys, and girls who participated in focus groups in 97 communities around the world. From 
gender differences and inequalities to intra-household decision making, more than 4,000 women and men in 
nearly 500 single-sex focus groups reflected on how social norms that define what it means to be and act as 
a woman or a man affect their life outcomes and their access to opportunities. 


The analysis reveals not only how little gender norms have changed and how similar they are across 
countries, but also how change in norms and in individual empowerment and capacity to act and decide 
takes place. Change takes place at private as well as community and society levels—and adjustments within 
one of these realms shape the pace and direction of change in the other. 

The process of gender-norm change appears to be uneven and challenging. The easy coexistence of new 
and old norms means that households in the same community can vary markedly in how much agency 
women can exercise; women feel less empowered when opinions and values of families and communities 
stay within traditional norms. 

This book seeks to understand the pathways toward greater gender equality by looking at the deepest 
constraints present for women and men. Unlike men, women are less dependent on the economic 
conditions of their environment. Men's power and agency are tightly intertwined with their identity and 
capacity as breadwinners. The main pathways for women to gain agency are education, employment, and 
decreased risk of domestic violence. A safer space encourages women to negotiate for more participation 
and equality in household discussions and decisions. Women's ability to contribute to family finances and to i 
control (even partially) major or minor assets helps them gain more voice at home and in public spheres. 

I 

Women's aspirations and empowerment to break gender barriers can be observed almost everywhere, even 
when economies are stagnant. These evident aspirations are partly due to women's perceptions of having 
more power and freedom in their lives and a greater ability to make decisions. Yet many women around the . 
world, the study shows, still face norms and practices that limit them. 



THE WORLD BANK 



Rockefeller Foundation 


Innovation for the Next lOO Years 


ISBN 978-0-8213-9862-3 



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